'^'kk K fe!5i*^*F t?5& ig ci^X'rr'ijjr^^Jrr: 






0^ c » • • 




Nooks & Corners 

of 
Old New YoRk 



Nooks & Corners 
of 

Old New YoRk 

Charles Hemftreet 

M 

Illustrated 
By 

E. C- Peixotto 



New York 
Charles Scribner's Sons 

MDCCCXCIX 



ccrniBBii 



\ 

. ^ 



•Ecown cfirv, 



COfVtlCHT, 1899 

BV CHAILtt U-|IBSt*'| (ONt 

NEW ^OIK 



4:J7ii 



' OPIES HECEIVEO, 








2.1 



INTRODUCrORT NOTE 

THE points of interest referred 
to in this book are to be found 
in the lower part of the Island of 
Manhattan. 

Settlements having early been 
made in widely separated parts of 
the island, streets were laid out from 
each settlement as they were needed 
without regard to the city as a 
whole ; with the result that as the 
city grew the streets lengthened and 
those of the various sections met at 
every conceivable angle. This re- 
sulted in a tangle detrimental to the 
city's interests, and in i 807 a Com- 
mission was appointed to devise a 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

City Plan tluit shouKl protect the 
interests of the lihole community. 

A glance at a citv map will show 
the confusion of streets at the lower 
end of the island and the regularitv 
brought about under the Citv Flan 
above Houston Street on the east, 
and I'uurtccnth Street on liie west 
side. 

The plan adopted hv the Com- 
mission absolutelv disregarded t he- 
natural topographv of the island, 
and resulted in a citv o\ straight 
lines and right angles. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 

No. 7 State Street 6 

Fraunces' Tavern 1 1 

The "Jack Knife," Gold and 

Piatt Streets 23 

Golden Hill Inn 24 

Cell in the Prison under the 

Hall of Records .... 2 5 
Statue of Nathan Hale, City 

Hall Park 38 

No. 1 1 Reade Street, where 

Aaron Burr had an office . 40 

The Tombs 41 

Park Street, with Church of 

the Transfiguration ... 44 

Hudson and Watts Streets . . ^^ 

Grave of Charlotte Temple . . 62 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Tomb of Alexander Hamilton 66 
Washington's Pew, St. Paul's 

Chapel 76 

Montgomery's Tomb ... 77 

A House of Other Days ... 79 

" Murderers* Row" .... 97 

Old Houses, \Vich;iwken Street 112 
Looking South from Minetta 

Lane 114 

Old Theological Seminary, 

Chelsea Square . . . 126 

Church of Sea and Land . . . 135 

Hone AUev 1 39 

Milestone on the Bowcrv . . 143 

P'.ntrance to Marble Cemeterv 152 

College of the City of New "I'ork 1 S6 

Gate of Old House of Refuge . 188 
The Little Church Around the 

Corner 192 

Milestone on Third Avenue . 204 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 
OF OLD NEW YORK 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 
OF OLD NEW YORK 



o 



I 



N the centre building of the row Fort 

h. 1 /- Tt !• /-^ T-1 1 Amsterdam 

ich races Bowling Oreen rark 



on the south there is a tablet bearing 
the words : 



THE SITE OF FORT AMSTERDAM, 

BUILT IN 1626. 

WITHIN THE FORTIFICATIONS 

WAS ERECTED THE FIRST 

SUBSTANTIAL CHURCH EDIFICE 

ON THE ISLAND OF MANHATTAN. 

IN 1787 THE FORT 

WAS DEMOLISHED 

AND THE GOVERNMENT HOUSE 

BUILT UPON THIS SITE 



This was the starting-point of the 1^"^^^ ^^^^ 

° ^ India Co. 

settlement which gradually became New 
York. In 16 14 a stockade, called Fort 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

Manhattan, was built as a temporary 
place of shelter for representatives of the 
United New Netherland Co., which had 
been formed to trade with the Indians. 
This company was replaced by the 
Dutch West India Co., with chartered 
rights to trade on the American coast, 
and the first step towards the forming of 
a permanent settlement was the building 
of Fort Amsterdam on the site of the 
stockade. 

In 1664 New Amsterdam passed into 
British possession and became New 
York, while Fort Amsterdam became 
Fort James. Under Queen Anne it 
was Fort George, remaining so until 
demolished in 1787. 

On the Fort's site was built the Gov- 
ernment House, intended for Washing- 
ton and the Presidents who should fol- 
low him. But none ever occupied it as 
the seat of government was removed 
to Philadelphia before the house was 
completed. After 1801 it became an 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

office building, and was demolished in 
1815 to make room for the present 
structures. 

The tinv patch of grass at the start- Bowling 
mg-pomt of Broadway, now called Bowl- 
ing Green Park, was originally the centre 
of sports for colonists, and has been the 
scene of many stirring events. The 
iron railing which now surrounds it was 
set up in 1771, having been imported 
from England to enclose a lead eques- 
trian statue of King George III. On 
the posts of the fence were representa- 
tions of heads of members of the Royal 
family. In 1776, during the Revolu- 
tion, the statue was dragged down and 
molded into bullets, and where the iron 
heads were knocked from the posts the 
fracture can still be seen. 



When the English took possession The 

r ^ ■ ■ r? i T- i • Battery 

of the City, m 1664, the l^ort bemg re- 
garded as useless, it was decided to build 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

a Battery to protect the newlv acquired 
possession. Thus the idea of the Bat- 
tery was conceived, although the work 
was not actually carried out until 
1684. 

Beyond the Fort there was a fringe 
of land with the water reaching to a 
point within a line drawn from Water 
and Whitehall Streets to Greenwich 
Street. Sixty vears after the Battery 
was built fifty guns were added, it having 
been lightly armed up to that time. 

The Battery was demolished about 
the same time as the Fort. The land 
on which it stood became a small park, 
retaining the name of the Battery, and 
was gradually added to until it became 
the Battery Park of to-day. 

C^^^\c A small island, two hundred feet off 

the Battery, to which it was connected 
by a drawbridge, was fortified in 181 1 
and called Fort Clinton. The arma- 
ment was twenty-eight j2-pounders, 

4 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

none of which was ever fired at an en- 
emy. In 1822 the island was ceded 
back to the city by the Federal Govern- 
ment — when the military headquarters 
were transferred to Governor's Island — 
and became a place of amusement under 
the name of Castle Garden. It was the 
first real home of opera in America. 
General Lafayette was received there in 
1824, and there Samuel F. B. Morse 
first demonstrated the possibility of con- 
trolling an electric current in 1835. 
Jenny Lind, under the management of 
P. T. Barnum, appeared there in 1850. 
In 1855 it became a depot for the re- 
ception of immigrants; in 1890 the 
offices were removed to Ellis Island, 
and in i 896, after many postponements, 
Castle Garden was opened as a public 
aquarium. 

State Street, facing the Battery, dur- State 
ing the latter part of the eighteenth and 
the early part of the nineteenth century, 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

was the fashionable quarter of the city, 
and on it were the homes of the wealthy. 
Several of the old houses still survive. 
No. 7, now a home for immigrant Irish 
girls, was the most conspicuous on the 
street, and is in about its original state. 
At No. 9 lived John Morton, called the 
" rebel banker " by the British, because 
he loaned large sums to the Continental 
Congress. His son. General Jacob 




N° 7 S[at( St rat 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

Morton, occupied the mansion after his 
marriage in 1791, and commanded the 
mihtia. Long after he became too in- 
firm to actually command, from the 
balcony of his home he reviewed on the 
Battery parade grounds the Tompkins 
Blues and the Light Guards. The 
veterans of these commands, by legis- 
lative enactment in 1868, were incorpo- 
rated as the " Old Guard." 

On the building at 4 and 6 Pearl The 

° . , , "Stadhuis 

Street, corner State Street, is a tablet 
which reads : 



1636 1897 

ON THIS SITE STOOD THE "STADHUIS" 

OF NEW AMSTERDAM ERECTED 1636 

THIS TABLET IS PLACED HERE IN LOVING MEMORY 

OF THE FIRST DUTCH SETTLERS BY THE 

HOLLAND DAMES OF THE NEW 

NETHERLANDS AND THE 

KNIGHTS OF THE LEGION OF THE CROWN 

LAVINIA 

KONIGIN 



It was set up October 7, 1897, and 
marks the supposed site of the first City 



. *^ > K. S AND CORNERS 

Hall. What is claimed by most au- 
thorities to be the real site is at Pearl 
Street, opposite Coenties Slip. 

Whitehall Street was one of the ear- 
liest thoroughfares of the citv, and was 
originally the open space left on the 
land side of the Fort. 

The Beaver Street was first called the Bea- 

Bcaver'i • ii i i i- i 

Path ^^''■^ lath. It was a ditch, on either 

side of which was a path. When houses 
were built along these paths they were 
improved by a rough pavement. At 
the end of the Beaver's Path, close to 
where Broad Street is now, was a swamp, 
which, before the pavements were made, 
had been reclaimed and was known as 
the Sheep Pasture. 



F'cttlcoa! 
Lane 



Marketfield Street, whose length is 
less than a block, opens into Broad 
Street at No. 72, a few feet from Bea- 
ver Street. 'I'his is one of the lost 



OF OLD NEW YORK. 

thoroughfares of the city. Almost as 
old as the city itself, it once extended 
past the Fort and continued to the river 
in what is now Battery Place. It was 
then called Petticoat Lane. The first 
French Huguenot church was built on 
it in 1688. Now the Produce Exchange 
cuts the street off short and covers the 
site of the church. 

Through Broad Street, when the town Broad 
was New Amsterdam, a narrow, ill- 
smelling inlet extended to about the 
present Beaver Street, then narrowed to 
a ditch close to Wall Street. The water- 
front was then at Pearl Street. Several 
bridges crossed the inlet, the largest at 
the point where Stone Street is. An- 
other gave Bridge Street its name. In 
1660 the ways on either side were paved, 
and soon became a market-place for 
citizens who traded with farmers for 
their products, and with the Indians 
who navigated the inlet in their canoes. 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

1 he locality has ever since been a cen- 
tre of exchange. When the inlet was 
finally filled in it left the present 
" Broad " Street. 

Where Beaver Street crosses this 
thoroughfiire, on the northwest corner, 
is a tablet : 



TO COMMtMORATi: THE GALLANT AND PATRIOTIC 

ACT OK MARINL'S WILLtlT IN HlRt StlZING 

JUNE 6, 1775, FROM THt BRITISH FORCES THE 

MUSKETS WITH WHICH HE ARMED HIS 

TROOPS. THIS TABLET IS ERECTED BV 

THE SOCIETV OF THE SONS OF THE 

REVOLUTION, NEW YORK, NOV. 12, 189Z 



On one side ot the tablet is a bas-relief 
of the scene showing the patriots stop- 
ping the ammunition wagons. 

Kraunccs" Fraunccs* Tavern, standing at the 

Tavern , - ti 11111 

southeast corner of Broad and 1 c.irl 

Streets, is much the same outwardly as 

it was when built in 1700, except that 

it has two added stories. Etienne De 




n.T^ P i. - ^ r 







Lancey, a Huguenot nobleman, built it 
as his homestead and occupied it for a 
quarter of a century. It became a tav- 
ern under the direction of Samuel 
Fraunces in 1762, It was Washing- 
ton's headquarters in 1776, and in 1783 
he delivered there his farewell address 
to his generals. 

Pearl Street was one of the two early Pearl 

Street 

roads leading from the Fort. It lay 
along the water front, and extended to 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

a ferry where Peck Slip is now. The 
road afterwards became Great ^ueen 
Street, and was lined with shops of 
store-keepers who sought the Long 
Island trade. The other road in time 
became Broadwav. 

On a building at 7 j Pearl Street, fac- 
ing Coenties Slip, is a tablet which reads : 



THE SITE OF THE 

FIRST DUTCH HOLiEOF ENTERTAINMENT 

ON THE ISLAND OF MANHATIAN 

LATER I HE SITE OF THE OLD "STAUT HUYS" 

OR CIIY HALL 

THIS TABLET IS PLACED HERE BY 

THE HOLLAND SOCIETY OF NEW YORK 

SEPTEMBER, 1890 



The First This is the site of the first City Hall of 

City Hall XT \ 1 

iNew Amsterdam, built 1642. It stood 
by the waterside, for beyond Water 
Street all the land has been reclaimed. 
There was a court room and a prison in 
the building. Before it, where the pil- 
lars of the elevated roail are now, was a 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

cage and a whipping-post. There was 
also the public " Well of William Cox." 

Beside the house ran a lane. It is 
there yet, still called Coenties Lane as in 
the days of old. But it is no longer 
green. Now it is narrow, paved, and 
almost lost between tall buildings. 

Opposite Coenties Lane is Coenties 
Slip, which was an inlet in the days of 
the Stadt Huys. The land about was 
owned by Conraet Ten Eyck, who was 
nicknamed Coentje. This in time be- 
came Coonchy and was finally vulgar- 
ized to "Quincy." The filling in of 
this waterway began in 1835 and the 
slip is now buried beneath Jeanette 
Park. The filled-in slip accounts for 
the width of the street. For the same 
reason there is considerable width at 
Wall, Maiden Lane and other streets 
leading to the water front. 

At 81 Pearl Street, close by Coenties First Priming 

cr ^u £ ^ • ^* Press in the 

blip, the first prmtmg-press was set up Colony 
13 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

by William Bradford, after he was ap- 
pointed Public Printer in 169^ A 
tablet marks the site, with the inscrip- 
tion : 



OS THIS SITE 

WILLIAM BRADFORD 

APPOISTED 

Pl'BLIC PRINTER 

APRIL 10, A. D. 1693 

ESTABLISHED THE FIRST 

PRINTING PRESS 

IN THE 

COLONY OF NEW YORK 

ERECTED BY THE 

NEW YORK 

HISTORICAL SOCIETY 

APRIL 10, A. D. 1893 

IN COMMEMORATION OF 

THE 200TH ANNIVERSARY 

OF THE INTRODICTION 

OF PRINTING IN 

NEW YORK 



Fire of 
1835 



Across the way, on a warehouse at 88 
Pearl Street, is a marble tablet of unique 
design, to commemorate the great fire 
of i8;{5, which started in Merchant 
Street, burned for nineteen hours, ex- 



«4 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

tended over fifty acres and consumed 
402 buildings. 

Directly through the block from this 
point is Cuyler's Alley, a narrow way 
between the houses running off Water 
Street. Although it is a hundred years 
old the only incident connected with its 
existence that has crept into the city's 
history, is a murder. In 1823, a Bos- 
ton merchant was waylaid and murdered 
for his money, and was dragged through 
this street for final disposition in the 
river, but the murderer made so much 
noise in his work that the constable 
heard him and came upon the abandoned 
corpse. 

Through a pretty garden at the back Stone 
of the Stadt Huys, Stone Street was 
reached. It was the first street to be 
laid with cobble-stones (1657), and so 
came by its name, which originally had 
been Brouwer Street. 
15 



NOOKS A N' I) CORNERS 

Delmonico's establishment at Beaver 
and William Streets is on the site of 
the second of the Dclmonico restaurants. 
(See Fulton and William Streets.) 

Flat and Exchange Place took its name from 

Hill the Merchants' Exchange, which was 

completed in William Street, fronting on 
Wall, in 1827 (the present Custom 
House). Before that date it had been 
called Garden Street. From Hanover 
to Broad Street was a famous place for 
bovs to coast in winter, and the grade 
was called " Flat and Barrack Hill." 
Scarcely more than an alley now, the 
street was even narrower once and was 
given its present width in i8j2. 

Wall Wall Street came bv its name nat- 

urally, for it was a walled street once. 
When war broke out between England 
and Holland in 165J, Governor Peter 
Stuvvesant built the wall along the line 
of the present street, from river to river. 
16 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

His object was to form a barrier that 
should enclose the city. It was a wall of 
wood, twelve feet high, with a sloping 
breastwork inside. After the wall was 
removed in 1699, ^^e street came to be 
a chief business thoroughfare. 

A new City Hall, to replace the Stadt Federal 
Huys, was built in 1699, at Nassau 
Street, on the site of the present Sub- 
Treasury building. In front of the 
building was the cage for criminals, 
stocks and whipping-post. When 
independence was declared, this build- 
ing was converted into a capitol and was 
called Federal Hall. The Declaration 
of Independence was read from the 
steps in 1776. President Washington 
was inaugurated there in 1789. The 
wide strip of pavement on the west side 
of Nassau Street at Wall Street bears 
evidence of the former existence of 
Federal Hall. The latter extended 
across to the western house line of the 
17 



NOOKS A S D CORNERS 

present Nassau Street, and so closed 
the thoroughfare that a passage-wav led 
around the building to Nassau Street. 
When the Sub-Treasury was built in 
1836, on the site of Federal Hall, 
Nassau Street was opened to Wall, and 
the little passage-way was left to form the 
wide pavement of to-day. 

Where Alexander Hamilton, in i~89, lived 

Alexander • , • l ■ j r \x' 11 

Hamilton '" ^ house on the south side or Wall 
Lived Street at Broad. His slaver, Aaron 

Burr, then lived back of Federal Hall 

in Nassau Street. 

The Custom House at William Street 
and Wall was completed in 1842. At 
this same corner once stood a statue ot 
William Pitt, Karl of Chatham. In 
1776, during the Revolution, the statue 
was pulled down by British soldiers, the 
head cut otf and the remainder dragged 
in the mud. Fhe people petitioned the 
Assembly in 1766 to erect the statue to 
18 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

Pitt, as a recognition of his zealous de- 
fence of the American colonies and his 
efforts in securing the repeal of the 
Stamp Act. At the same time provi- 
sion was made for the erection of the 
equestrian statue of George III in 
Bowling Green. The statue of Pitt was 
of marble, and was erected in 1770. 

The Tontine Building at the north- Tontine 
west corner of Wall and Water Streets House 
marks the site of the Tontine Coffee 
House, a celebrated house for the inter- 
change of goods and of ideas, and a po- 
litical centre. It was a prominent insti- 
tution in the city, resorted to by the 
wealthy and influential. The building 
was erected in 1794, and conducted by 
the Tontine Society of two hundred and 
three members, each holding a |2oo 
share. Under their plan all property 
was to revert to seven survivors of the 
original subscribers. The division was 
made in i 876. 

*9 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

^"' Close to where the coffee house was 

Market , •, , , • , 

built later, a market was set up in the 
middle of Wall Street in 1709, and be- 
ing the public market for the sale of 
corn and meal was called the " Meal 
Market." Cut meat was not sold there 
until 1740. In I - J 1 this market be- 
camt- the only public place tor the sale 
and hiring ot slaves. 

Trinity Church has stood at the head 
of Wall Street since 1697. Before 1779 
the street was filled with tall trees, but 
during the intensely cold winter of that 
year most of them were cut down and 
used for kindling. 

The ferrv wharf has been at the foot 
of the street since 1694, when the water 
came up as far as Pearl Street. It was 
here that Washington landed, coming 
from Elizabethport after his journey 
from Virginia, April 2j, 1789, to be in- 
augurated. 

The United States Hotel, Fulton, be- 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

tween Water and Pearl Streets, was built 
in 1823 as Holt's Hotel. It was the 
headquarters for captains of whaling 
ships and merchants. A semaphore, or 
marine telegraph, was on the cupola, the 
windmill-like arms of which served to 
indicate the arrival of vessels. 



Middle 



On the building at the northeast cor- J^i"i<\_ 

" . Dutch 

ner of Nassau and Cedar Streets is a church 
tablet reading : 



HERE STOOD 

THE MIDDLE DUTCH CHURCH 

DEDICATED A. D. I 7^9 

MADE A BRITISH MILITARY PRISON I 776 

RESTORED I79O 

OCCUPIED AS THE UNITED STATES POST-OFFICE 

1845 1875 

TAKEN DOWN I 882 



This church was a notable place of 
worship ; the last in the city to repre- 
sent strict simplicity of religious service 
as contrasted with modern ease and ele- 
gance. The post-office occupied the 
building until its removal to the struct- 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

ure it now occupies. The second home 
of the Middle Dutch Church was in 
Lafayette Place. 

Pie Woman's Nassau Street was opened in 1696, 
when Teunis de Kay was given the 
right to make a cartway from the wall 
to the commons (now City Hall Park). 
At first the street was known as Pie 
Woman's Lane. 

The Where Maiden Lane is there was 

Maiden's ^ r ' 

Lane ^"^^ ^ Harrow Stream or sprmg water, 

which flowed from about the present 
Nassau Street. Women went there to 
wash their clothing, so that it came to 
be called the X'irgin's Path, and from 
that the Maiden's Lane. A blacksmith 
having set up a shop at the edge of the 
stream near the river, the locality took 
the name of Smit's V'lei, or the Smith's 
Valley, afterwards shortened to the 
V'lei, and then readily corrupted to 
" Fly." It was natural, then, when a 



OF OLD NEW YORK. 

market was built on the Maiden's Lane, 
from Pearl to South Streets, to call it 
the Fly Market. This was pulled 
down in 1823. 



On Gold Street, northwest corner of The 

T-»i o • J 1 J 1 r Jack-Knife 

rlatt Street, is a wedge-snaped house or 

curious appearance. It is best seen from 

the Piatt Street side. When this street 

was opened in 1834 by Jacob S. Piatt, 

who owned much of the neighboring 

land and wanted a street of his own, the 

house was large and 

square and had been 

a tavern for a great 

many years. The 

new street cut the 

house to its present 

strange shape, and 

it came to be called 

the " Jack-knife." 

Golden Hill, cele- 
brated since the time 



Gold &£ PU» st». 




NOOKS AND CORNERS 

Golden Hill of the Dutch, IS Still to be seen in the 
high ground around Chff and Gold 
Streets. Pearl Street near John shows 
a sweeping curve where it circled around 
the hill's base, and the same sort of 
j-^ curve is seen in 

^^-^ ' Maiden Lane on the 
vji^^..^/^, ' south and Fulton 
^-;^t.i;^ ^ I Street on the north. 
f'vV^.d^ x! The hrst blood uf 
'•'■. /C"^^>v ^'^^ Revolution was 
shed on this hill 
in January, 1770, 
after the British sol- 
diers had cut down 
a liberty pole set up 
by the Liberty Boys. 
1 he ht^ht occurred 
on open ground back. 
ot an inn which still 
stands at 122 Wil- 
liam Street, and is 
commemorated in a 
tablet on the wall of 




Golden Hill Inn 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

a building at the corner of John and 
William Streets. It reads : 



" GOLDEN HILL 

HERE, JAN. l8, 1770 

THE FIGHT TOOK PLACE BETWEEN THE 

"SONS OF liberty" AND THE 

BRITISH REGULARS, I 6TH FOOT 

FIRST BLOODSHED IN THE 

WAR OF THE REVOLUTION 



The inn is much the same as in early 
days, except that many buildings crowd 
about it now, and modern paint has 
made it hideous to antiquarian eyes. 

On the east side of William Street, a Delmonko's 
few doors south of Fulton, John Del- 
monico opened a dingy little bake shop 
in 1823, acted as chef and waiter, and 
built up the name and business which 
to-day is synonymous with good eating. 
In 1832 he removed to 23 William 
Street. Burned out there in 1835, he 
soon opened on a larger scale with his 

^5 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

brother at William and Beaver Streets, 
on which site is still an establishment 
under the Delmonico name. In time 
he set up various places — at Chambers 
Street and Broadway ; Fourteenth Street 
and Fifth Avenue; Twenty-sixth Street 
and Broadway, and finally at Forty- 
fourth Street and Fifth Avenue. 

John Street John Street Church, between Nassau 

Church 1 xi'ii- ■-. \ ,- ^ T I 

and \\ illiam Streets, was the nrst Meth- 
odist Church in America. In 1767 it 
was organized in a loft at 120 William 
Street, then locally known as Horse 
and Cart Street. In 1768 the church 
was built in John Street. It was rebuilt 
in 1817 and again in 1841. John 
Street perpetuates the name ot John 
Harpendingh, uHd owned most ot the 
land thereabout. 

John Street At whut is now 17, 19 and 21 John 
Street, in 1767 \yas built the old John 
Street Theatre, a wooden structure, 
26 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

painted red, standing sixty feet back 
from the street and readied by a cov- 
ered way. An arcade through the house 
at No. 17 still bears evidence of the 
theatre. The house was closed in 1774, 
when the Continental Congress recom- 
mended suspension of amusements. 
Throughout the Revolutionary War, 
however, performances were given, the 
places of the players being filled by 
British officers. Washington frequently 
attended the performances at this thea- 
tre after he became President. The 
house was torn down in 1798. 

The site of the Shakespeare Tavern 
is marked by a tablet at the southwest 
corner of Nassau and Fulton Streets. 
The words of the tablet are: 



ON THIS SITE IN THE 
OLD SHAKESPEARE TAVERN 

WAS ORGANIZED 

THE SEVENTH REGIMENT 

NATIONAL GUARD, S. N. Y. 

AUG. 25, 1824 

*7 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

Shakespeare xj^js tavern, low, old-fashioned, built of 

Tavern 

small yellow bricks with dormer win- 
dows in the roof, was constructed before 
the Rcxolution. In 1808 it was bought 
by Thomas Hodgkinson, an actor, and 
was henceforth a meeting- place tor Thes- 
pians. It was resorted to — in contrast 
to the business men guests of the Ton- 
tine Coffee House — bv the wits ut' the 
day, the poets and the writers. In 1824 
Hodgkinson died, and the house was 
kept up for a time by his son-in-law; 
Mr. Stoneall. 

^"^='' At the southwest corner of Beekman 

t'linton 1 XT 

Hall and Nassau Streets was built, in i8jo, 

the first home of the Mercantile Li- 
brary, called Clinton Hall. In 1820 
the first steps were taken by the mer- 
chants of the city to establish a reading 
room for their clerks. 1 he library was 
opened the following year with ~oo vol- 
umes. In iS:; the association was in- 
corporated. It was located first in a 
16 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

building in Nassau Street, but in 1826 
was moved to Cliff Street, and in 1830 
occupied its new building in Beekman 
Street. De Witt Clinton, Governor of 
the State, had presented a History of 
England as the first volume for the li- 
brary. The new building was called 
Clinton Hall in his honor. In 1850, 
the building being crowded, the Astor 
Place Opera House was bought for 
;?250,ooo, and remodeled in 1854 into 
the second Clinton Hall. The third 
building of that name is now on the site 
at the head of Lafayette Place. 

The St. George Building, on the St. George's 

, . , /- r. , o • Church 

north side of Beekman Street, just west 
of Cliff Street, stands on the site of St. 
George's Episcopal Church, a stately 
stone structure which was erected in 
181 1. In 1 8 14 it was burned ; in 1 8 16 
rebuilt, and in 1845 removed to Ruth- 
erford Place and Sixteenth Street, where 
it still is. Next to the St. George Build- 
29 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

ing is the tall shot-tower which may be 
so promincntlv seen from the windows 
of tail buildings in the lower part of the 
citv, but is so difficult to find when 
search is made tor it. 

Barnum's Barnum's Museum, opened in 1S42, 

was on the site of the St. Paul Build- 
ing, at Broadway and Ann Street. There 
P. T. Barnum brought out Tom 
Thumb, the Woolly Horse and many 
other curiosities that became celebrated. 
On the stage of a dingy little amphi- 
theatre in the house many actors played 
who afterwards won national recogni- 
tion. 

Original The original Park Theatre was built 

Parle 

Theatre '" *79^» ^"^^ Stood on Park Row, be- 
tween Ann and Bcekman Streets, facing 
what was then Citv Hall Park and what 
is now the Post Office. It was 200 feet 
from Ann Street, and extended back to 
the alley which has ever since been 

30 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

called Theatre Alley. John Howard 
Payne, author of " Home, Sweet 
Home," appeared there for the first 
time on any stage, in 1809, as the 
"Young American Roscius." In 1842 
a ball in honor of Charles Dickens was 
given there. Many noted actors played 
at this theatre, which was the most im- 
portant m the city at that period. It was 
rebuilt in 1820 and burned in 1848. 

At the junction of Park Row and First Brick 
Nassau Street, where the T'imes Build- church 
ing is, the Brick Presbyterian Church 
was erected in 1768. There was a 
small burying-ground within the shadow 
of its walls, and green fields stretched 
from it in all directions. It was sold in 
1854, and a new church was built at 
Fifth Avenue and Thirty-seventh Street. 

Within a few steps of where the statue Where 
of Benjamin Franklin is in Printing ^ ^ ^^^ , 
House Square, Jacob Leisler was hanged 

31 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

in his own garden in 1 691, the citv's 
first martyr to constitutional Hberty. 
A wealthy merchant, after James III 
fled and William III ascended the 
throne, Leisler was called bv the Com- 
mittee of Safety to act as Governor, 
He assembled a Continental Congress, 
whose deliberations were cut short bv 
the arrival of Col. Henrv Sloughter as 
Governor. I-,nemies of Leisler decided 
on his death. The new Governor re- 
fused to sign the warrant, but being 
made drunk signed it unknowingly and 
Leisler was hanged and his bodv buried 
at the foot of the scaffold. A few years 
later, a royal proclamation wiped the 
taint of treason from Leisler's memory 
and his body was removed to a more 
honored resting-place. 

Tammany The walls of the Su?i building at 

Hall 

Park Row and Frankfort Street, are 
those of the first permanent home of 
Tammany Hall. Besides the hall it 

32 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

contained the second leading hotel in the 
city, where board was ^7 a week. Tam- 
many Hall, organized in 1789 by Wil- 
liam Mooney, an upholsterer, occupied 
quarters in Borden's tavern in lower 
Broadway. In 1798 it removed to 
Martling's tavern, at the southeast cor- 
ner of Nassau and Spruce, until its 
permanent home was erected in 181 1. 

There is a tablet on the wall of the ^ Liberty 
south corridor of the post-office build- 
ing, which bears the inscription : 



ON THE COMMON OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK, 
NEAR WHERE THIS BUILDING NOW STANDS, THERE 
STOOD FROM 1 766 TO I 776 A LIBERTY POLE 
ERECTED TO COMMEMORATE THE REPEAL OF THE 
STAMP ACT. IT WAS REPEATEDLY DESTROYED BY 
THE VIOLENCE OF THE TORIES AND AS REPEATEDLY 
REPLACED BY THE SONS OF LIBERTY, WHO ORGAN- 
IZED A CONSTANT WATCH AND GUARD. IN ITS 
DEFENCE THE FIRST MARTYR BLOOD OT' THE AMER- 
ICAN REVOLUTION WAS SHED ON JAN. 1 8, I770. 



The cutting down of this pole led to 
the battle of Golden Hill. 



33 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

City Hall yi^^j post-office building was erected 
on :i portion of the City Hall Park. 
This park, like all of the Island of 
Manhattan, was a wilderness a few hun- 
dred years ago. Bv 1 66 1, where the 
park is there was a clearing in which 
cattle were herded. In time the clear- 
ing was called The Fields ; later The 
Commons. On The Commons, in 
Dutch colonial days, criminals were 
Potter's Field executed. Still later a Potter's Field 

In City Hall 

Park occupied what is now the upper end of 

the Park ; above it, and extending over 
the present Chambers Street was a 
negro burying-ground. On these com- 
mons, in 1735, ^ poor-house was built, 
the site of which is covered by the pre- 
sent City Hall. From time to time 
other buildings were erected. 

The new Jail was finished in 1763, 
and, having undergone but few altera- 
tions, is now known as the Hall of Re- 
cords. It was a military prison during 
the Revolution, and afterwards a Debt- 

34 



OF OLD NEW YORK 



ors' Prison. In 1830 it became the 
Register's Office. It was long consid- 
ered the most beautiful building in the 
city, being patterned after the temple of 
Diana of Ephesus. 

The Bridewell, or City Prison, was 
built on The Commons in 1775, close 
by Broadway, on a line with the Debt- 
ors' Prison. It was torn down in 1838. 

The present City Hall was finished „, . 
in 18 12. About that time The Com- city Hall 
mons were fenced in and 
became a park, taking in be- 
sides the present space, that 
now occupied by the post- 
office building. The con- 
structors of the City Hall 
deemed it unnecessary to use 
marble for the rear wall as 
they had for the sides and 
front, and built this wall of 
freestone, it being then al- 
most inconceivable that traf- 
fic could ever extend so far 



.jLi-isio/' v>Ai- - - 




35 



'H 



■>/ 



\ 



> 

Cell in thj^nson 

under the HoU 0/ Records 



in thj^ri 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

Governor's up-town as to permit a view of the rear of 
the building. The most noted spot in 
the Citv Hall is the Governor's Room, 
an apartment originally intended for the 
use of the Governor when in the city. 
In time it became the municipal portrait 
gallery, and a reception room tor the 
distinguished guests of the city. The 
bodies of Abraham Lincoln and of John 
Howard Payne lay in state in this room. 
With it is also associated the visit of 
Lafavette when he returned to this coun- 
try in 1S24 and made the room his re- 
ception headquarters. The room was 
also the scene of the celebration after 
the capture of the " Guerriere " by the 
" Constitution" ; the reception to Com- 
modore Perry after his Lake P-rie vic- 
tory ; the celebration in connection with 
the laying of the Atlantic cable ; and at 
the completion of the Krie Canal. It 
contains a large gilt punch-bowl, show- 
ing scenes in New York a hundred years 
ago. This was presented to the city by 
-,6 



OF OLD NEW YORK 



General Jacob Morton, Secretary of the 
Committee of Defense, at the opening 
of the City Hall. 

At the western end of the front wall 
of City Hall is a tablet reading : 



NEAR THIS SPOT IN THE PRESENCE OF 

GEN. GEORGE WASHINGTON 

THE DECLARATION OF 

INDEPENDENCE 

WAS READ AND PUBLISHED 

TO THE 

AMERICAN ARMY 

JULY 9TH, 1776 



Other buildings erected in the Park First 
were The Rotunda, 18 16, on the site of gank 
the brown stone building afterwards oc- 
cupied by the Court of General Sessions, 
where works of art were exhibited ; and 
the New York Institute on the site of 
the Court House, occupied in 18 17 by 
the American, or Scudder's Museum, 
the first in the city. The Chambers 
Street Bank, the first bank for savings 

37 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

in the city, opened in the basement of 
the Institute building in 1818. In 1841 
PhiHp Hone was president of this bank. 
It afterwards moved to the north side 
of Bleecker Street, between Broadway 
and Crosby, and became the Bleecker 
Street Bank. Now it is at IWentv- 
second Street and Fourth Avenue, and 
is called The Bank tor Savings. 




The statue of Nathan Hale was 
erected in City Hall Park by the Sons 
of the Revolution. Some authori- 
ties still insist that the Martyr Spy 
was hanged in this park. 

Until 1 821 there were fences of 
wooden pickets about the park. In 
that year iron rail- 
ings, which had been 
imported trom Eng- 
land, were set up, 
with four marble pil- 
lars at the southern 
entrance. I he next 



StAtu* 0/ 

NATHAN HALE 
C.tj Hdll Park- 



-h=>. 



I 



« .*' ^*" 



5« 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

year trees were set out within the en- pf""u°[ 
closure, and just within the raiHng were park 
planted a number of rose-bushes which 
had been supplied by two ladies who had 
an eye to landscape gardening. Frosts 
and vandals did not allow the bushes 
more than a year of life. Four granite 
balls, said to have been dug from the 
ruins of Troy, were placed on the pillars 
at the southern entrance. May 8, 1827. 
They were given to the city by Captain 
John B. Nicholson, U. S. N. 

The building 39 and 41 Chambers 
Street, opposite the Court House, stands 
on the site of the pretty little Palmo 
Opera House, built in 1844 for the 
production of Italian opera, by F. Palmo, 
the wealthy proprietor of the Cafe des 
Mille Colonnes on Broadway at Duane 
Street. He lost his fortune in the 
operatic venture and became a bartender. 
In 1848 the house became Burton's 
Theatre. About 1800, this site was 

39 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

occupied bv the First Reformed Presby- 
terian Church, a frame building which 
was replaced by a brick structure in 
1818. The church was moved to 
Prince and Marion Streets in 1834. 



Office of 
Aaron Burr 




At No. 1 1 Reade Street is a dingy 
little house, now covered with signs and 
given over to half a dozen small busi- 
ness concerns, about which hover memo- 
ries of Aaron Burr. It was here he had 
a law office in i8j2, and here when he 
was seventy-eight years old he first met 
Mme. Jumel whom he afterwards 
married. I he house is to be 
torn down to make wav tor new 
municipal buildings. 

At Rose and Duane Streets 
stands the Rhinelander build- 
ing, and on the Rose Street 
side close by the main en- 
trance is a small gratcii window. 
This is the last trace of a sugar- 
40 






'-if- 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

house, which, during; the Revolutionary -^" Historic 

Ti • • 1 •!• Window 

War, was used as a British mihtary 
prison. The building was not demol- 
ished until 1892, and the window, re- 
taining its original position in the old 
house, was built into the new. 



Where the Tombs prison stands was '^^^ 

Tombs 

once the Collect, or Fresh Water Pond, prison 
This deep body of water took up, ap- 
proximately, the space between the 
present Baxter, Elm, Canal and Pearl 
Streets. When the Island of Manhat- 
tan was first inhabited, a swamp stretched 
in a wide belt across it from where 
Roosevelt Slip is now to the end of 
Canal Street on the west side. The 
Collect was the centre of this stretch, 
with a stream called the Wreck Brook 
flowing from it across a marsh to the East 
River. At a time 
near the close of the 
eighteenth century 
a drain was cut from 




'The Tomb} 



NOOKS A N: D CORNERS 

the Collect to the North River, on a line 

with the present Canal Street. With 

the progress of the city to the north, 

The the pond was drained, and the swamp 

Collect / . , ' / 

made inro nrm ground. In 1816, the 

Corporation Yards occupied the block 

of Kim, Centre, Leonard and Franklin 

Streets, on the ground which had filled 

in the pond. The Tombs, or Citv 

Prison, was built on this block in i8j8. 

'^^^ The Five Points still exists where 

Five Points .,,,,, i n i ^ 

W orth, Baxter and Park Streets mter- 
sect, but it IS no lont^er the centre of a 
community of crime that gained inter- 
national notoriety. It was once the 
gathering-point tor criminals and de- 
graded persons of both sexes and of all 
nationalities, a rookcrv for thieves and 
murderers. Its history began more 
than a century and a half ago. During 
the so-called Negro I nsurrection of 1 74 1 , 
when miiny negroes were handed, the 
severest punishment was the burning at 

4a 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

the Stake of fourteen negroes in this 
locality. 

One of the five " Points " is now 
formed by a pleasant park which a few 
years ago took the place of the last 
remnant of the old-time locality. In 
no single block of the city was there 
ever such a record for crime as in this 
old "Mulberry Bend" block. Set low 
in a hollow, it was a refuge for the out- 
casts of the city and of half a dozen 
countries. The slum took its name, as 
the park does now, from Mulberry Mulberry 
Street, which on one side of it makes a slum 
deep and sudden bend. In this slum 
block the houses were three deep in 
places, with scarcely the suggestion of 
a courtyard between them. Narrow 
alleys, hardly wide enough to permit 
the passage of a man, led between 
houses to beer cellars, stables and time- 
blackened, tumbledown tenements. 
Obscure ways honeycombed the entire 
block — ways that led beneath houses, 

43 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

over low sheds, through fragments of 
wall — w;ivs that were known only to the 
thief and the tramp. There " Bottle 
Alley," "Bandit's Roost" and "Rag- 
picker's Row " were the scenes of 
many wild fights, and nuinv a time the 
ready stiletto ended the lives of men, 
or the heavy club dashed out brains. 

The Five Points House ot Industry's 
work was begun in 1850, and has been 
successful in ameliorating the moral and 
physical condition of the people of the 
vicinity. The institution devoted to 
this work stands on the site of the "Old 
Brewery," the most notorious criminal 
resort ut the locality. 



An Ancient 
Church 



At Mott and Park Streets is now the 
Church of the Transfiguration 
A (Catholic). On a hill, the 
*^ suggestion of which is still 
to be seen in steep Park 
Street, the Zion Lutheran 
Church was erected 







OF OLD NEW YORK 

in 1797. In 1 8 10 it was changed to 
Zion Episcopal Church. It was burned 
in 1 8 15; rebuilt 1 8 19, and sold in 1853 
to the Church of the Transfiguration, 
which has occupied it since. This last 
church had previously been in Cham- 
bers Street, and before that it had occu- 
pied several quarters. It was founded 
in 1827, and is the fourth oldest church 
in the diocese. Zion Episcopal Church 
moved in 1853 to Thirty-eighth Street 
and Madison Avenue, and in 1891 
consolidated with St. Timothy's Church 
at No. 332 West Fifty-seventh Street. 
The Madison Avenue building was sold 
to the South (Reformed) Dutch Church. 

Chatham Square has been the open Chatham 

• • • ,1 ,• 1 Square 

space It IS now ever smce the time when a 
few houses clustered about Fort Amster- 
dam. The road that stretched the length 
of the island in 1647 formed the only 
connecting link between the fort and six 
large bouweries or farms on the east side. 

45 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

The bouwerie settlers in the early 
days were harassed bv Indians, and 
spent as much time defending them- 
selves and skurrying off to the protec- 
tion of the I'ort as they did in improv- 
ing the land. The earliest settlement 
in the direction of these bouweries, 
which had even a suggestion ot perma- 
nency, was on a hill which had once 
been an Iruiian outlook, close bv the 
present Chatham Square, b.manucl de 
Groot,a giant negro, with ten superannu- 
ated slaves, were permitted to settle here 
upon agreeing to pay each a fat hog and 
12]4 bushels of grain a year, their chil- 
dren to remain slaves. 

North of this settlement stretched a 
primeval forest through which cattle 
wandered and were lost. Then the 
future Chatham Square was fenced in 
as a place of protection for the cattle. 
Bouwerie The lane leading from this enclosure 

to the outlying bouweries, during the 
Revolution was used for the passage of 
46 



La II 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

both armies. At that period the high- 
way changed from the Bouwerie Lane 
of the Dutch to the EngHsh Bowery 
Road. In 1807 it became "The 
Bowery." 

The earHest " Kissing Bridge " was K:iss'ng 
over a small creek, on the Post Road, " ^^ 
close by the present Chatham Square. 
Travelers who left the city by this road 
parted with their friends on this bridge, 
it being the custom to accompany the 
traveler thus far from the city on his 
way. 

What is now Park Row, from City 
Hall Park to Chatham Square, was for 
many years called Chatham Street, in 
honor of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham. 
In 1886 the aldermen of the city changed 
the name to Park Row, and in so doing 
seemed to stamp approval of an event 
just one hundred years before which had 
stirred American manhood to acts of 

47 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

valor. This was the dragging down by 
British soldiers in 1776 of a statue of 
the Karl of Chatham which had stood 
in Wall Street. 

Tea Water The most Celebrated pump in the city 
""^*' was the Tea Water Pump, on Chatham 

Street (now Park Row) near (Jueen 
(now Pearl) Street, The water was 
supplied from the Collect and was con- 
sidered of the rarest quality for the 
making of tea. Up to 1789 it was 
the chief water-works of the city, and the 
water was carted about the city in casks 
and sold from carts. 

Home of Within a few steps of the Bowerv, on 

icmplc ^^^ north side of Pell Street, in a frame 
house, Charlotte Temple died. The 
heroine of Mrs. Rowson's "Tale of 
Truth," whose sorrowful Hfe was held 
up as a moral lesson a generation ago, 
had lived first in a house on what is now 
the south side ot Astor Place close to 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

Fourth Avenue. Her tomb is in 
Trinity churchyard. 

The Bull's Head Tavern was built Bull's Head 
on the site of the present Thalia Theatre, ^^"^ 
formerly the Bowery Theatre, just above 
Chatham Square, some years before 
1763. It was frequented by drovers 
and butchers, and was the most popular 
tavern of its kind in the city for many 
years. Washington and his staff occu- 
pied it on the day the British evacuated 
the city in 1783. It was pulled down 
in 1826, making way for the Bowery 
TheatrCo 

The Bowery Theatre was opened First 

1 1 • I r ■ Bowery 

m 1826, and durmg the course or its Theatre 
existence was the home of broad melo- 
drama, that had such a large following 
that the theatre obtained a national rep- 
utation. Many celebrated actors ap- 
peared in the house. It was burned 
in 1828, rebuilt and burned again in 

49 



\ O O K S A N' D CORNERS 

1836, again in i8j8, in 1845 and 
in 1 S48. 

New Bowerv Street was opened from 
the south side of Chatham Square in 
1856. The street carried away a part 
of a Jewish burying-ground, a portion 
ot which, crowded between tenement- 
houses and shut off from the street by 
a wall and iron fence, is still to be seen 
a few steps from Chatham Square. 
The first synagogue of the Jews was 
in Mill Street (now South William). 
The graveyard mentioned was the first 
one used bv this congregation, and was 
opened in 16H1, so tar from the city 
that it did not seem probable that the 
latter could ever reach it. Earlv in 
the nineteenth century the graveyard 
was moved to a site which is now Sixth 
Avenue and Kleventh Street. 



Washington's The Franklin House was the first 
Cherry Hill p'^cc of residence of Cieorge Washing- 
ton in the cirv, whcti he became Presi- 

50 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

dent in 1789. It stood at the corner of 
Franklin Square (then St. George Square) 
and Cherry Street. A portion of the 
East River Bridge structure rests on 
the site. Pearl Street, passing the 
house, was a main thoroughfare in those 
days. The house was built in 1770 by 
Walter Franklin, an importing mer- 
chant. It was torn down in 1856, 
The site is marked by a tablet on the 
Bridge abutment, which reads : 



THE FIRST 
PRESIDENTIAL MANSION 
NO. 1 CHERRY STREET 

OCCUPIED BY 

GEORGE WASHINGTON 

FROM APRIL 23, 1789 

TO FEBRUARY 23, I79O 

ERECTED BY THE 

MARY WASHINGTON COLONIAL CHAPTER, D.A. R. 

APRIL 30, 1899 



At No. 7 Cherry Street gas was first 
introduced into the city in 1825. This 
is the Cherry Hill district, sadly deteri- 



51 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

orated from the merrv davs of its in- 
fancy. Its name is still preserved 
in Cherry Street, which is hemmed in 
by tenement-houses which the Italian 
population crowd in almost inconceiv- 
able numbers. At the top of the hill, 
where these Italians drag out a crowded 
existence, Richard Sackett, an English- 
man, established a pleasure garden be- 
yond the city in 1670, and because its 
chief attraction was an orchard of cherry 
trees, called it the Cherry Garden — a 
name that has since clung to the locality. 




II 




Hud3o/> j. Wdt(> 5ti 



II 

FROM New Amsterdam, which cen- The 
tered about the Fort, the only road Brcmdvvay 
which led through the island branched 
out from Bowling Green. It took the 
line of what is now Broadway, and dur- 
ing a period of one hundred years was 
the only road which extended the length 
of the island. 



That Broadway, beyond St. Paul's 
Chapel, ever became a greatly traveled 
thoroughfare, was due more to accident 
than design, for to all appearances the 
road which turned to the east was to be 
the main artery for the city's travel, and 
all calculations were made to that end. 
Broadway really ended at St. Paul's. 

55 



The First 
Graveyard 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

Morris Street was called Beaver Lane 
before the name was changed in 1829. 
On this street, near Broadway, the first 
graveyard of the city was situated. It 
was removed and the ground sold at 
auction in i6~6, when a plot was ac- 
quired opposite Wall Street. This last 
was used in conjunction with Trinity 
Church until city interment was pro- 
hibited. 



On the office building at 41 Broad- 



The First 

Built way there is fixed a tablet which bears 

the inscription : 



THIS TABLET MARKS THE SITE OF THE 

FIRST HABITATIONS OF WHITE MEN 

ON THE ISLAND OF MANHATTAN 

ADRIAN BLOCK 

COMMANDER OF THE •*TICER" 

ERECTED HERE FOUR HOUSES OR HUTS 

AFTER HIS VESSEL WAS BURNED 

NOVEMBER, 1613 

HE BUILT THE RESTLESS, THE FIRST VESSEL 

MADE BY EUROPEANS IN THIS COUNTRY 

THE RESTLESS WAS LAUNCHED 

IN THE SPRING OF 1614 



56 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

Adrian Block was one of the earliest 
fur traders to visit the island after 
Henry Hudson returned to Hol- 
land with the news of his discovery. 
The " Tiger " took fire in the night 
while anchored in the bay, and Block 
and his crew reached the shore with 
difficulty. They were the only white 
men on the island. Immediately they 
set about building a new vessel, which 
was named the " Restless." 

Next door, at No. 39, President 
Washington lived in the Macomb's 
Mansion, moving there from the Frank- 
lin House in 1790. Subsequently the 
house became a hotel. 

There is a rift in the walls between Tin Pot 

T..T r> ^ Alley 

the tall buildings at No. 55 Broadway, 
near Rector Street, a cemented way that 
is neither alley nor street. It was a green 
lane before New Amsterdam became 
New York, and for a hundred years has 

57 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

been called Tin Pot Alley. With the 
growth of the citv the little lane came 
near being crowded out, and the name, 
not being of proper dignity, would be 
forgotten but for a terra cotta tablet 
fixed in a building at its entrance. This 
was placed there by Rev. Morgan Dix, 
the pastor of Trinity Church. 

At the southwest corner of Broadway 
and Rector Street, where a sky-scraper 
is now, Grace Church once stood with a 
graveyard about it. The church was 
completed in 1808, and was there until 
1846, when the present structure was 
erected at Broadway and Tenth Street. 
Upon the Rector Street site, the Trin- 
ity Lutheran Church, a log structure, 
was built in 1671. It was rebuilt in 
1741, and was burned in the great hre 
of 1776. 

Trinity Trinity churchyard is part of a large 

Churchyard r i i i !'!-'•• 

tract or land, granted to the 1 rmity 

S8 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

Corporation in 1705, that was once the 
Queen's Farm. 

In 1635 there were a number of 
bouweries or farms above the Fort. 
The nearest — one extending about to 
where Warren Street is — was set apart 
for the Dutch West India Company, 
and called the Company's Farm. Above 
this was another, bounded approxi- 
mately by what are now Warren and 
Charlton Streets, west of Broadway. 
This last was given by the company, in 
1635, t^ Roelof Jansz (contraction of 
Jannsen), a Dutch colonist. He died 
the following year, and the farm became 
the property of his wife, Annetje Jans. 
(In the feminine, the z being omitted, 
the form became Jans.) The farm was 
sold to Francis Lovelace, the English 
Governor, in 1 670, and he added it to the 
company's farm, and it became thereafter 
the Duke's Farm. In 1674 it became 
the King's Farm. When Queen Anne 
began her reign it became the Queen's 

59 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

Annctjc Farm, and it was she who granted it to 
Farm* Trinitv, making it the Church Farm. 

In 173 1, which was sixty-one years 
after the Annetje Jans's farm was sold 
to Governor Lovelace, the descendants 
of Annetje Jans for the first time de- 
cided that they had yet some interest in 
the farm, and made an unsuccessful pro- 
test. From time to time since protests 
in the form of lawsuits have been made, 
but no court has sustained the claims. 
The city's growth was retarded by 
church ownership of land, as no one 
wanted to build on leasehold property. 
It was not until the greater part of avail- 
able land on the east side of the island 
was built upon that the church property 
was made use of on the only terms it 
could be had. Not until 1803 were the 
streets from Warren to Canal laid out. 

Trinity Church was built in 1697. 
I'or years before, however, there had 
been a burving-ground bevond the city 
60 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

and the city's wall that became the 
Trinity graveyard of to-day. The wav- 
ing grass extended to a bold bluff over- 
looking Hudson River, which was about 
where Greenwich Street now is. Through 
the bluff a street was cut, its passage 
being still plainly to be seen in the high 
wall on the Trinity Place side of the 
graveyard. 

The oldest grave of which there is a oldest Grave 
record is in the northern section of the churchyard 
churchyard, on the left of the first path. 
It is that of a child, and is marked with 
a sandstone slab, with a skull, cross- 
bones and winged hour-glass cut in re- 
lief on the back, the inscription on the 
front reading : 

w. c. 

HEAR . LYES . THE . BODY 

OF . RICHARD . CHVRCH 

ER . SON . OF . WILLIA 

M. CHVRCHER . WHO . 

DIED . THE . 5 OF . APRIL 

1 68 1 . OF . AGE 5 YEARS 

AND . 5 . MONTHS 

6i 






NOOKS AND CORNERS 

The records tell nothing of the Churchcr 
family. 

Within a few feet of this stone is an- 
other that countless eyes have looked 
at through the iron fence from Broad- 
way, which savs : 

HA, SYDNEY, SYDNEY I 
LYEST THOU HERE ? 
I HERE LYE, 
'til time IS FLOWN 

TO ITS EXTREMITY. 

It is the grave of a merchant — once an 
officer of the British army — Sydney 
Breese, who wrote his epitaph and di- 
rected that it he placed on 
his tombstone. He died 
in 1767. 

On the opposite side of 

the path, nearer to Broad- 

wav, is a marble slab Ivintr 

flat on the ground and 

6a 




f 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

each year sinking deeper into the earth. Grave of 
It was placed there by one of the sex- Temple^ 
tons of Trinity more than a century ago, 
in memory of Charlotte Temple. 

Close by the porch of the north en- 
trance to the church is the stone that 
marks the grave of William Bradford, 
who set up the first printing-press in 
the colony and was printer to the Col- 
onial Government for fifty years. He 
was ninety-two years old when he died 
in 1752. The original stone was crum- 
bling to decay when, in 1 863, the Vestry 
of Trinity Church replaced it by the 
present stone, renewing the original 
inscription (see page 14). 

The tall freestone Gothic shaft, the Martyrs' 

I I -1 • I 1 Monument 

only monumental pile m the northern 
section of the churchyard, serves to 
commemorate the unknown dead of the 
Revolution. Trinity Church with all 
its records, together with a large section 

63 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

of the western part of the city, was 
burned in 1776 when the British army 
occupied the city. During the next 
seven years the only burials in the grave- 
yard were the American prisoners from 
the Provost Jail in The Commons and 
the other crowded prisons of the city, 
who were interred at night and without 
ceremony. No record was kept of who 
the dead were. 

^ Close to the Martyrs' Monument is a 

Churchyard i r i • • 

Cryptograph stone SO near the fence that its mscrip- 
tion can be read from Broadway : 

HERE LIES 

DEPOSITED THE BODY OF 

JAMES LEESON, 

WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE ON 

THE 28TH DAY OF SEPTEMBER, I 794, 

AGED 38 YEARS. 

And above the inscription arc cut these 
curious characters : 

64 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

It is a cryptograph, but a simple one, 
familiar to school children. Jn its solu- 
tion three diagrams are drawn and let- 
tered thus : 



A 


B 


C 


D 


E 


F 



T 


u 


V 


W 


X 


Y 


Z 







Q. R 



The lines which enclose the letters are 
separated from the design, and each 
section used instead of the letters. For 
example, the letters A, B, C, become : 

JUL 

The second series begins with K, be- 
cause the I sign is also used for J. 
The letters of the three series are distin- 
guished by dots ; one dot being placed 
with the lines of the first series ; two 
dots with the second, but none with the 
third. If this be tried, any one can 
readily decipher the meaning of the 

65 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

cryptograph, and read " REMEMBER 
DEATH." 



Close to the north door of the church 
are interred the remains of Lady Corn- 
bury, who could call England's Oueen 
Anne cousin. She was the wife of 
Edward Hyde, Lord Cornbury, who 
was Governor of New York in 1702. 
He was a grandson of the Earl of Clar- 
endon, Prime Minister of Charles II ; 
and son of that Earl of Clarendon who 
was brother-in-law of James II. So 
Lady Cornbury was first cousin of 
Queen Anne. She was Baroness of 
Clifton in her own right, and a gracious 
lady. She died in 1706. 

The tomb of Alexan- 
der Hamilton, patriot, 
and statesman, 
stands conspic- 
uously in the 
southern half 




Tool of 
Alexaweh Uamu-Ton 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

of the churchyard, about forty feet from Alexander 

Bj J r r ^ • Hamilton's 

roadway and ten reet rrom the iron Tomb 

raihng on Rector Street. 

In the same part of the churchyard 

are interred the remains of Philip, eldest 

son of Alexander Hamilton. The son 

in 1 80 1 fell in a duel with George L. 

Eacker, a young lawyer, when the two 

disagreed over a political matter. Three 

years later Eacker died and was buried 

in St. Paul's churchyard, and the same 

year Alexander Hamilton fell before the 

duelling pistol of Aaron Burr. 

Close bv Hamilton's tomb, a slab Last Friend 
'. . .Of 

almost buried in the earth bears the in- Aaron Burr 

scription *' Matthew L. Davis' Sepul- 
chre." Strange that this "last friend 
that Aaron Burr possessed on earth " 
should rest in death so close to his 
friend's great enemy. He went to the 
Jersey shore in a row-boat with Burr on 
the day the duel was fought with Ham- 
ilton, and stood not far away with Dr 
67 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

Hosack to await the outcome. He was 
imprisoned for refusing to testify before 
the Coroner. Afterwards he wrote a 
life of Burr. He was a merchant, with 
a store at 49 Stone Street, and was 
highly respected. 

Tomb of Within a few steps of Broadway, at 

Capt. James f • ' 

Lawrence the southem entrance to the church, 
is the tomb of Captain James Lawrence, 
U. S. N., who was killed on board the 
frigate Chesapeake during the engage- 
ment with H. H. M. frigate " Shannon." 
His dying words, " Don't give up the 
ship ! " are now known to every school- 
boy. The handsome mausoleum close 
by the church door, and the surrounding 
eight cannon, first attract the eye. These 
cannon, selected from arms captured 
from the English in the War of 1812, 
are buried deep, according to the di- 
rections of the Vestry of Trinity, in or- 
der that the national insignia, and the 
inscription telling of the place and time 

68 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

of capture, might be hidden and no 
evidence of triumph paraded in that 
place — where all are equal, where peace 
reigns and enmity is unknown. The 
monument was erected August 22, 1 844. 
Before that the remains of Captain 
Lawrence had been interred in the south- 
west corner of the churchyard, beneath 
a shaft of white marble. This first rest- 
ing-place was selected in September, 
1 8 13, when the body was brought to the 
city and interred, after being carried in 
funeral procession from the Battery. 

" D. Contant " is the inscription on 
the first vault at the south entrance, one 
of the first victims of the revocation of 
the Edict of Nantes to be buried in the 
city. There are many Huguenot me- 
morials in the churchyard, the oddest 
being a tombstone with a Latin inscrip- 
tion telling that Withamus de Marisco, 
who died in 1765, was " most noble on 
the side of his father's mother." 
69 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 



Crcsap, the y\(- f^e ^ear of the church, to the 
Figlittrr noTth, is a small headstone : 



IN MEMORY OF 

MICHAEL CKESAP 

FIRST CAPTAIN OF THE 

RIFLE BATTALIONS 

AND SON OF COLONEL THOMAS CRESAP 

WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE 

OCT. l8, A, D. I 775. 

His father had been a friend and neigh- 
bor ot Washington in Virginia, and he 
himself was a brilliant Indian fighter on 
the frontier of his native State. It was 
the men under his command who, un- 
ordered, exterminated the family of 
Logan, the Indian chief, "the friend 
of the white man." Manv a bov, who 
in school declaimed, unthinkingly, 
" Who is there to mourn for Logan ? 
Not one ! " grown to manhood, cannot 
but look with interest on the grave of 
Logan's foe. Tradition has been kind 
to Cresap's memory, insisting that his 
70 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

heart broke over the accusation of re- 
sponsibility for the death of Logan's 
family. 

There is another slab, close by the 
grave of Captain Cresap, which tells : 

" HERE LIETH YE BODY OF SUSAN- 
NAH NEAN, WIFE OF ELIAS NEAN, BORN 
IN YE CITY OF ROCHELLE, IN FRANCE, 
IN YE YEAR 1660, WHO DEPARTED 
THIS LIFE 25 DAY OF DECEMBER, 
1720, AGE 60 YEARS." "HERE LIETH 
ENTERRED YE BODY OF ELIAS NEAN, 
CATECHIST IN NEW YORK, BORN IN 
SOUBISE, IN YE PROVINCE OF CAEN- 
TONGE IN FRANCE IN YE YEAR 1 662, 
WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE 8 DAY OF 
SEPTEMBER 1 7 22 AGED 60 YEARS." 
"THIS INSCRIPTION WAS RESTORED BY 
ORDER OF THEIR DESCENDANT OF THE 
6th GENERATION, ELIZABETH CHAMP- 
LIN PERRY, WIDOW OF THE LATE 
COM'R O. H. perry, of THE U. S. 
NAVY, MAY, ANNO DOMINI, 1 846." 

But the stone does not tell that the 
Huguenot refugee was for many years 

71 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

a vestryman of Trinity Church, and that 
among his descendants are the Behnonts 
and a dozen distinguished families. 
Before coming to America, Elias Nean 
was condemned to the galleys in France 
because he refused to renounce the re- 
formed religion. 

Where Beneath the middle aisle in the church 

CioV. 

Dc Lancey He the bones of the eldest son of Stephen 
Was buried ^fcltienne) De Lancey— James De Lan- 
cey. He was Chief Justice of the Colony 
of New "^'ork in lyjj, and Lieutenant- 
Governor in i~53. He died suddenly 
in 1 760 at his country house which was 
at the present northwest corner of De- 
lancey and Chrystie Streets. A lane led 
from the house to the Bowerv. 



Hume of Thames Street is as narrow now as it 

Dc Lanreys ^'^^ O"^ hundred and fifty years ago, 

when it was a carriageway that led to 

the stables of Ltienne De Lancey. The 

Huguenot nobleman left his Broad 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

Street house for the new home he had 
built at Broadway and Cedar Street in 
1730. In 1741, at his death, it became 
the property of his son, James, the Lieu- 
tenant-Governor. It was the most im- 
posing house in the town, elegantly 
decorated, encircled by broad balconies, 
with an uninterrupted garden extending 
to the river at the back. 

After the death of Lieutenant-Gover- 
nor De Lancey in 1760, the house be- 
came a hotel, and was known under 
many names. It was a favorite place for 
British officers during the Revolution, 
and in 1789 was the scene of the first 
" inauguration ball " in honor of Presi- 
dent Washington. 

The house was torn down in 1793. 
In 1806 the City Hotel was erected on 
its site and became the most fashionable 
in town. It was removed in 1850 and 
a line of shops set up. In 1889 ^^^ 
present buildings were erected. 

A tablet on the building at 1 13 Broad- 

73 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

way, corner of Cedar Street, marks the 
site, reading : 



THt Sn I OK 

LIEUT. COVE. DE LASCEY'S HOUSE, 

LATER THE CITV HOTEL. 

IT WAS HERE THAT THE NO.N-IMPORTATION 

AC;REEMENT, in opposition to THE STAMP 

ACT, WAS SIGNED, OCT. 1 5TH, I 766. THE 

TAVERN HAD MANY PROPRIETORS BY WHOSE 

NAMES IT WAS SUCCESSIVELY CALLED. IT 

WAS ALSO KNOWN AS THE PROVINCE ARMS, THE 

CITY ARMS AND BURNS COFFEE HOUSE OR TAVERN. 



Opposite Liberty (then Crown) Street, 
in the centre of Broadway, there stood 
in 1789 a detached building 42x25 
feet. It was the ' * up-town market," 
patronized bv the wealthy, who did their 
own marketing in those days, their black 
slaves carrying the purchases home. 

Washington Washington Market, at the foot of 

Market .-, , , .... ,_, 

rulton Street, was built in i 8 j ^ I he 
water washed the western side of it then, 
and ships sailed to it to deliver their 

74 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

freight. Since then the water has been 
crowded back year by year with the 
growing demand for land. In its early 
days it was variously called Country 
Market, Fish Market and Exterior 
Market. 

At the outskirts of the city, in a field ^}- P^"^'' 

•' . Chapel 

that the same year had been sown with 
wheat, the cornerstone of St. Paul's 
Chapel was laid on May 14, 1764. The 
church was opened two years later, and 
the steeple added in 1794. It fronted 
the river which came up then as far as 
to where Greenwich Street is now, and 
a grassy lawn sloped down to a beach 
of pebbles. During the days of Eng- 
lish occupancy. Major Andre, Lord 
Howe and Sir Guy Carleton worshipped 
there. Another who attended services 
there was the English midshipman who 
afterwards became William IV. 

President Washington, on the day of 
his inauguration, marched at the head of 
75 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 



The 

Washington 
Pew in 
St. Pauls 



the representative men of the new nation 
to attend service in St. Paul's, and there- 
after attended regularly. The pew he 
occupied has been preserved and is still 
to be seen next the north wall, midwav 
between the chancel and the vestrv 
room. Directly opposite is the pew 
occupied at the same period bv Gov- 
ernor George Clinton. 

Back of the chancel is the monument 
to Major-General Richard Monteomerv, 
who tell before Ouebec in i 775, crving;, 
" Men of New York, you will not fail 
to follow where your general leads ! " 
Congress decided on the monument, and 

Benjamin Frank- 
lin bought it in 
!•" ranee for joo 
guineas. A pri- 
vateer bringint^ it 
to this country 
was captured by 
a British gunboat 
""^ which in turn was 




W4(hit>2ton Pew 
$' TaCL^ CHATU. 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

taken, and the monument, arriving safe 
here, was set in place. The body was 
removed from its first resting-place in 
Quebec, and interred close beside the 
monument in i8i 8. 

In the burying-ground, which has 
been beside the church since it was built, 
are the monuments of men whose 
names are associated with the city's his- 
tory : Dr. William James Macneven, 
who raised chemistry to a science ; 
Thomas Addis Emmet, an eminent 
jurist and brother of Robert Emmet ; 
Christopher Collis, who established the 
first water works in the city, 
and who first conceived the 
idea of constructing the Erie 
Canal ; and a host of others. 

The tomb of George 
Frederick Cooke, the 
tragedian, is conspicu- 
ous in the centre of 
the yard, facing the 
main door of the church. 



77 




,r~Monl^onierir 5 TjCJpb 



'/ -/ 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

The Actor Cooke was born in England in 1756, 
Grave and died in New York in 1812. Early 

in life he was a printer's apprentice. 

By 1800 he had taken high rank among 

tragic actors. 

The grave of George L. Eacker, who 

killed the eldest son of Alexander 

Hamilton in a duel, is near the Vesey 

Street railing. 

Astor The Astor House, occupying the 

Broadway block between \'esey and 
Barclay Streets, was opened in 1836 by 
Boyden, a hotel keeper of Boston. 
This site had been part of the Church 
Farm, and as earlv as 1729, when there 
were only a few scattered farm houses 
on the island above what is now Eiberty 
Street, there was a farm house on the 
Astor House site ; and from there ex- 
tended, on the Broadway line, a rope- 
walk. Prior to the erection of the hotel 
in I 830, the site for the most part had 
been occupied by the homes of John 
78 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

Jacob Astor, John G. Coster and David 
Lydig. On a part of the site, at 221 
Broadway, in 1817, M. PafF, popu- 
larly known as " Old Paff," kept a bric- 
a-brac store. He dealt especially in 
paintings, having the reputation of buy- 
ing worthless and old ones and " restor- 
ing" them into masterpieces. His was 
the noted curiosity-shop of the period. 

Where Vesev and Greenwich Streets ^ House of 

Other Days 

and West Broadway come together is a 
low, rough-hewn rock house. It has 
been used as a shoe store since the early 




NOOKS A N' II CORNERS 

part of the centur\ . On Its roof is a 
monster boot bearing the date of i8j2, 
which took part in the Croton water 
parade and a dozen other celebrations. 
In pre-revolutionary days, when the 
ground where the building stands was 
all Hudson River, and the water ex- 
tended as far as the present Greenwich 
Street, according to tradition, this was a 
lighthouse. There have been manv 
changes in the outward appearance, but 
the foundation of solid rock is the same 
as when the waters swept around it. 

The Road Greenwich Street follow-s the line of a 
c.rcenwich road which led from the city to Green- 
wich Village. This road was on the 
waterside. It was called Greenwich 
Road. South of Canal Street, west of 
Broadway, was a marshy tract known as 
Lispenard's Meadows. Over this swamp 
Greenwich Road crossed on a raised 
causeway. When the weather was bad 
for any length of time, the road became 
So 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

heavy and in places was covered by the 
strong tide from the river. At such 
times travel took an inland route, along 
the Post Road (now the Bowery) and 
by Obelisk Lane (now Astor Place and 
Greenwich Avenue). 

St. Peter's Church, at the southeast St. Peter's 
corner of Barclay and Church Streets, 
the home of the oldest Roman Catholic 
congregation in the city, was built in 
1786, and rebuilt in 1838. The con- 
gregation was formed in 1783, although 
mass was celebrated in private houses 
before that for the few scattered Catholic 
families. 

The two blocks included between Columbia 

College 

Barclay and Murray Streets, West 
Broadway and Church Street, were oc- 
cupied until 1857 by the buildings and 
grounds of Columbia College, That 
part of the Queen's Farrn lying west of 
Broadway between the present Barclay 
81 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

and Murray Streets — a strip of land 
then in the outskirts of the citv — in 
1754 was given to the governors of 
King's College. During the Revolu- 
tion the college suspended exercises, re- 
suming in 1784 as Columbia College 
under an act passed by the Legislature 
of the State. In 18 14, in consideration 
of lands before granted to the college 
which had been ceded to New Hamp- 
shire in settlement of the boundary, the 
college was granted by the State a tract 
of farming land known as the Hosack 
Botanical Garden. This is the twenty 
acres lying between Forty-seventh and 
Forty-ninth Streets, Fifth and Sixth 
Avenues. At that time the city ex- 
tended but little above the City Hall 
Park, and this land was unprofitable and 
for many years of considerable expense 
to the college. By 1839 ^^^ ^^^^' ^^'^ 
crept past the college and the locality 
being built up the college grounds were 
cramped between the limits of two 
82 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

blocks. In 1854, Park Place was opened 
through the grounds of the college from 
Church Street to West Broadway (then 
called College Place). Until about 
1 816 the section of Park Place west of 
the college grounds was called Robinson 
Street. In 1857 the college was moved 
to Madison Avenue, between Forty- 
ninth and Fiftieth Streets, and in 1890 
it was re-organized on a university basis. 

West Broadway was originally a lane chapel 
which wound from far away Canal Street 
to the Chapel of Columbia College, and 
was called Chapel Place. Later it be- 
came College Place. In 1892 the street 
was widened south of Chambers Street, 
in order to relieve the great traffic from 
the north, and extended through the 
block from Barclay to Greenwich Street. 
Evidence of the former existence of the 
old street can be seen in the pillars of 
the elevated road on the west side of 
West Broadway at Murray Street, for 

83 



NOOKS A N' D CORNERS 

these pillars, once on the sidewalk, are 
now several feet from it in the street. 



Bowling In the vicinity of what is now Green- 

Garden ^^ich and Warren Streets, the Bowling 
And First (j^een Garden was established in the 

Vaiixhall - i • i i 

early part ot the eighteenth century. It 
was a primitive forest, for there were no 
streets above Crown ( now Liberty ) Street 
on the west side, and none above Frank- 
fort on the cast. The land on which 
the Garden stood was a leasehold on the 
Church Farm. The place was given 
the name ot the \'auxhall Ciarden before 
the middle ot the same centurv, and tor 
forty years thereafter was a fashionable 
resort and sought to be a copy of the 
Vauxhall in London. There was danc- 
ing and music, and groves dimly lighted 
where visitors could stroll, and where 
they might sit at tables and eat. Bv the 
time the city stretched past the locality, 
all that was left of the resort was what 
would now be called a low saloon, and 
84 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

its pretty garden had been sold for 
building lots. The second Vauxhall was 
off the Bowery, south of Astor Place. 



The Stewart Building;, on the east side 

" Stewart's 



A. T 

Stewt 

of Broadway, between Chambers and store 
Reade Streets, has undergone few exter- 
nal changes since it was the dry goods 
store of Alexander T. Stewart. On this 
site stood Washington Hall, which was 
erected in 1809. It was a hotel of the 
first class, and contained the fashionable 
ball room and banqueting-hall of the 
city. The building was destroyed by 
fire July 5, 1844. The next year Stew- 
art, having purchased the site from the 
heirs of John G. Coster, began the con- 
struction of his store. Stewart came 
from Ireland in 1823, at the age of 
twenty. For a time after his arrival he 
was an assistant teacher in a public 
school. He opened a small dry goods 
store, and was successful. The Broad- 
way store was opened in 1846. Four 

8s 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

years later Stewart extended his building; 
so that it reached Reade Street. All 
along Broadway by this year business 
houses were taking the place of residen- 
ces. The Stewart residence at the north- 
west corner of Thirty-fourth Street and 
Fitth Avenue, was, at the time it was 
built, considered the finest house in 
America. Mr, Stewart died in 1876, 
leaving a fortune of fiftv millions. His 
body was afterwards stolen from St. 
Mark's Churchyard at Tenth Street 
and Second Avenue. 

At Broadway and Duane Street, 
roasted chestnuts were first sold in the 
street. A Frenchman stationed himself 
at this corner in 182S, and sold chest- 
nuts there for so many years that he 
came to be reckoned as a living land- 
mark. 

At the same corner was the popular 
Cafe des Mille Colonnes, the proprietor 
of which, I'\ Palmo, afterwards built and 



OFOLDNEWYORK 

conducted Palmo's Opera House in 
Chambers Street. 

In a store window on Broadway, close ^'''^^ Sewing 

1 r • 1 • Machine 

to Duane Street, the first sewing-machine 
was exhibited, A young woman sat in 
the window to exhibit the working of the 
invention to passers-by. It was regarded 
as an impracticable toy, and was looked at 
daily by many persons who considered it 
a curiosity unworthy of serious attention. 

At Nos. 314 and 316 Broadway, on ^^^1°"'*" 
the east side of the street just south of 
Pearl Street, stood Masonic Hall, the 
cornerstone of v/hich was laid June 24, 
1826. It looked imposing among the 
structures of the street, over which it 
towered, and was of the Gothic style of 
architecture. While it was in course of 
erection, William Morgan published his 
book which claimed to reveal the secrets 
of masonry. His mysterious disappear- 
ance followed, and shortly after, the rise 

87 



K O O K. S AND CORNERS 

of the anti-Masonic party and popular 
excitement put masonrv under such a 
ban that the house was sold by the 
Order, and the name of the building was 
changed to Gothic Hall. On the second 
floor was a room looked upon as the 
most elegant in the United States: an 
imitation of the Chapel of Henry \'III, 
it was of Gothic architecture, furnished 
in richness of detail and appropriateness 
of design, and was one hundred feet long, 
fifty wide and twenty-five high. In it 
were held public gatherings of social and 
political nature. 

New York Vhc two blocks now enclosed bv 
Duane, Worth, Broadway and Church 
Streets, were occupied bv the buildings 
and grounds of the New York Hospital, 
ThomasStreetwas atterwardscut through 
the grounds. As the City Hospital, 
the institution had been projected before 
the War of the Revolution. The build- 
ing was completed about 1775. During 

88 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

the war it was used as a barrack. In 
1 79 1 it was opened for the admission of 
patients. On the lawn, which extended 
to Broadway, various societies gathered 
on occasions of annual parades and cele- 
brations. The hospital buildings were 
in the centre of the big enclosure. At 
the northern end of the lawn, the present 
corner of Broadway and Worth Street, 
was the New Jerusalem Church. 

On the corner of West Broadway and Riley's Fifth 
Franklin Street was Riley's Fifth Ward 
Hotel, which was a celebrated place 
in its day. It was the prototype of the 
modern elaborately fitted saloon, but 
was then a place of instruction and a 
moral resort. In a large room, reached 
by wide stairs from the street, were 
objects of interest and art in glass 
cases — pictures of statesmen, uniforms 
of the soldiers of all nations, Indian war 
implements, famous belongings of cele- 
brated men, as well as such simple 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

curiosities as a two-headed calf. On 
Franklin Street, before Riley's door, 
was a marble statue minus a head, one 
arm and sundry other parts. It was 
all that remained of the statue of the 
Earl of Chatham, William Pitt, which 
had stood in Wall Street until dragged 
down by British soldiers. For twenty- 
five years the battered wreck had lain 
in the corporation yard, until found and 
honored with a place before his door by 
Riley. At the hitter's death the His- 
torical Society took the remains of the 
statue, and it is in its rooms vet. 

The passage of W\ashington through 
the island is commemorated by a tablet 
on a warehouse at 255 West Street, 
near Laight, which is inscribed : 



TO MARtC THE LANDING PLACE OF 

GENERAL GEORGE WA.'^HINGTON, 

JUNE 25, 1775, 

ON HIS WAY TO CAMBRIDGE 

TO COMMAND 

THE AMERICAN ARMV. 



90 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

St. John's Church of Trinity Parish, St. John's 

'' 1 1 -1 Church 

in Varick Street close to Beach, was built 
in 1807. When the church was fin- 
ished St. John's Park, occupying the 
entire block opposite — between Varick 
and Hudson, Laightand Beach Streets — 
was established for the exclusive use of 
residents whose houses faced it. Before 
it was established, the place had been 
a sandy beach that stretched to the river. 
The locality became the most fashion- 
able of the city in 1825. By 1 8 50 there 
had begun a gradual decline, for per- 
sons of wealth were moving uptown, 
and it degenerated to a tenement-house 
level after 1869, when the park disap- 
peared beneath the foundations of the 
big freight depot which now occu- 
pies the site. 

Around the corner from the church, 
a block away in Beach Street, is a tiny 
park, one of the last remnants of the 
Annetje Jans Farm. The bit of farm 
is carefully guarded now, much more so 
91 



NOOKS A N' D CORNERS 

than was the entire beautiful tract. It 
forms a triangle and is fenced in bv an 
iron railing, with one gate, that is fast 
barred and never opened. There is one 
struG;gling tree, wrapped close in winter 
with burlap, but it seems to teel its 
loneliness and does not thrive. 

The Red From the centre of St. John's Park 

on the west, Hubert Street extends 
to the river. This street, now given 
over to manufacturers, was, in 1824, 
the chief promenade of the city next 
to the Battery Walk. It led directly 
to the Red Fort at the river. The fort 
was some distance from the shore. It 
was built early in the century, was 
round and of brick, and a bridge led to 
it. It was never of anv practical use, 
but, like Castle Garden, was used as 
a pleasure resort. 

Lispcnard's Farlv in the eighteenth centurv, An- 
thony Rutgers held under lease from 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

Trinity a section of the Church Farm 
which took in the Dominie's Bouwerie, 
a property lying between where Broad- 
way is and the Hudson River. The 
southern and northern Hnes were ap- 
proximately the present Reade and 
Canal Streets. It was a wild spot, re- 
maining in a primitive condition — part 
marsh, part swamp — covered with 
dwarf trees and tangled underbrush. 
Cattle wandered into this region and 
were lost. It was a dangerous place, too, 
for men who wandered into it. To live 
near it was unhealthy, because of the 
foul gases which abounded. It seemed 
to be a worthless tract. About the year 
1730, Anthony Rutgers suggested to the 
King in Council that he would have this 
land drained and made wholesome and 
useful provided it was given to him. 
His argument was so strong and sensi- 
ble that the land — seventy acres, now in 
the business section of the city — was 
given him and he improved it. At the 
93 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 



Cows on 
Broadway 



northern edge of the improved waste 
hvcd Leonard Lispenard, in a farm 
house which was then in a northern 
suburb of the city, bounded bv what is 
Hudson, Canal and \'estrv Streets. 
Lispenard married the daughter of 
Rutgers, and the land falling to him it 
became Lispenard's Meadows. In Lis- 
penard's time Broadway ended where 
White Street is now and a set of bars 
closed the thoroughfare against cows 
that wandered along it. The one bit 
of the meadows that remains is the tinv 
park at the foot of Canal Street on the 
west side. Anthony Rutgers' home- 
stead was close by what is Broadway 
and Thomas Street. After his death in 
1750 it became a public house, and, 
with the surrounding grounds, was 
called Ranelagh Garden, a popular 
place in its time. 



Canal 
Street 



On a line with the present Canal 
Street, a stream ran from the Fresh 



94 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

Water Pond to the Hudson River, at 
the upper edge of Lispenard's Mead- 
ows. A project, widely and favorably 
considered in 1825, but which came to 
nothing, advocated the extension of 
Canal Street, as a canal, from river to 
river. The street took its name natur- 
ally from the little stream which was 
called a canal. When the street was 
filled in and improved, the stream was 
continued through a sewer leading from 
Centre Street. The locality at the foot 
of the street has received the local title 
of " Suicide Slip " because of the num- 
ber of persons in recent years who have 
ended their lives by jumping into Hud- 
son River at that point. 

In Broadway, between Grand and 
Howard Streets, in 18 19, West's circus 
was opened. In 1827 this was con- 
verted into a theatre called the Broad- 
way. Later it was occupied by Tatter- 
sail's horse market. 

95 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

Original Ncxt door to Tattcrsall's, at Xo. 444 

Olympic r> i • • i ai • t"! 

Theatre Broadway, the onixinal Olympic Thea- 
tre was built in iSj-. W. R. Blake 
and Henrv E. Willard built and man- 
aged the house. It was quite small and 
their aim had been to present plays of a 
high order of merit by an exceptionally 
good compain . The latter included 
besides Blake, Mrs. Maederand (leorge 
Barrett. Atrer a tew months of struggle 
against unprofitable business, prices 
were lowered. Little success was met 
with, the performances being of too ar- 
tistic a nature to be popular, and Blake 
gave up the effort and the house. In 
December, 18J59, Win. Mitchell leased 
the house and gave performances at low 
prices. 

At No. 45^^ Broadway, between Grand 
and Howard Streets, in iS44john Little- 
field, a corn doctor, set up a place, desig- 
natinii; himself as a chiropodist — an occu- 
pation before unknown under that title. 
96 



OF OLD NEW YORK 



At No. 485 Broadway, near Broome 
Street, Brougham's Lyceum was built 
in 1850, and opened in December with 
an '' occasional rigmarole " and a farce. 
In 1852 the house was opened, Sep- 
tember 8, as Wallack's Lyceum, hav- 
ing been acquired by James W. Wal- 
lack. Wallack ended his career as an 
actor in this house. In 1861 he re- 
moved to his new theatre, corner Thir- 
teenth Street and Broadway. Still \ 
later the Lyceum was called the ^ 
Broadway Theatre. 



*' Murderers' Row" has its start 
where Watts Street ends at Sullivan, 
midway of the block between Grand 
and Broome Streets. It could not be 
identified by its name, for it is not a' 
"row" at all, merely an ill- 
smelling alley, an arcade extend- .'-i 
ing through a block of battered .^/i. 
tenements. After running half 
its course through the block, the 
97 J- 




NOOKS AND CORNERS 

alley is broken by an intersecting space 
between houses — a space that is taken 
up by push carts, barrels, tumble-down 
wooden balconies and lines of drying 
clothes. "Murderers' Row" is cele- 
brated in police annals as a crime centre. 
But the evil doers were driven out long 
years aG;o and the houses given over to 
Italians. These people are excessivelv 
poor, and have such a hard struggle for 
life as to have no desire to regard the 
laws of the Health Board. Constant 
complaints are made that the houses are 
hovels and the alley a breeding-place 
for disease. 

Greenwich (jreenwich Village sprang from the 

oldest known settlement on the Island 
of Manhattan. It was an Indian vil- 
lage, clustering about the site of the 
present West Washington Market, at 
the foot of Gansevoort Street, when 
Hendrick Hudson reached the island, 
in 1609. 

98 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

The region was a fertile one, and its 
natural drainage afforded it sanitary ad- 
vantages which even to this day make 
it a desirable place of residence. There 
was abundance of wild fowl and the 
waters were alive with half a hundred 
varieties of fish. There were sand hills, 
sometimes rising to a height of a hun- 
dred feet, while to the south was a marsh 
tenanted by wild fowl and crossed by a 
brook flowing from the north. It was 
this Manetta brook which was to mark 
the boundary of Greenwich Village 
when Governor Kieft set aside the land 
as a bouwerie for the Dutch West India 
Company. The brook arose about 
where Twenty-first Street now crosses 
Fifth Avenue, flowed to the southwest 
edge of Union Square, thence to Fifth 
Avenue and Eighth Street, across where 
Washington Square is, along the line of 
Minetta Street, and then to Hudson 
River, between Houston and Charlton 
Streets. 

99 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

Sir Peter The interests of the little settlement 

\N arrcn 

were greatly advanced in 1744, when 
Sir Peter Warren, later the hero of 
Louisburg, married Susannah De Lan- 
cey and went to live there, purchasing 
three hundred acres of land. 

Kpidemics in the citv from time to 
time drove many persons to Greenwich 
as a place of refuse. But it remained 
for the fatal yellow-fever epidemic of 
1822, when 384 persons died in the 
citv, to make Greenwich a thriving sub- 
urb instead of a struggling village. 
Twentv thousand persons fled the city, 
the greater number settling in Green- 
wich. Banks, public offices, stores of 
every sort were hurriedlv opened, 
and whole blocks of buildings sprang 
up in a few days. Streets were left 
where lanes had been, and corn-fields 
were transformed into business and 
dwelling blocks. 
Evolution of The sudden influx of people and con- 

(irccnwich , • , n • i 

Streets sequent trade into the village brought 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

about the immediate need for street im- 
provements. Existing streets were 
lengthened, footpaths and alleys were 
widened, but all was done without any 
regard to regularity. The result was 
the jumble of streets still to be met with 
in that region, where the thoroughfares 
are often short and often end in a cul- 
de-sac. 

In time the streets of the City Plan 
crept up to those of Greenwich Village, 
and the village was swallowed up by the 
city. But it was not swallowed up so 
completely but that the irregular lines 
of the village streets are plainly to be 
seen on any city map. 

Near where Spring Street crosses 
Hudson there was established, about 
1765, Brannan's Garden, on the north- 
ern edge of Lispenard's Meadows. It 
was like the modern road-house. Green- 
wich Road was close to it, and pleasure- 
seekers, who thronged the road on the 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

way from the citv to Greenwich Village, 
were the chief guests of the house. 

Duanc Street Crowded closc between dwellings on 
the east side of Hudson Street, fifty feet 
south of Spring, is the Duane M. E. 
Church, a quaint-looking structure, half 
church, half business building. This is 
the successor of the North Church, the 
North River Church and the Duane 
Street Church, founded in 1797, which, 
before it moved to Hudson Street, in 
1863, was in Barley (now Duane) Street, 
between Hudson and Greenwich Streets. 

In Spring Street, near Varick, is the 
Spring Street Presbyterian Church, 
which was built in 1825. Before its 
erection the "old" Spring Street Pres- 
byterian Church stood on the site, hav- 
ing been built in 1811. 

Richmond Alrhouo;h the leveling vandalism of a 
great city has removed every trace ot 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

Richmond Hill, the block encircled by 
Macdougal, Charlton, Varick and Van- 
dam Streets, is crowded thick with 
memories of men and events of a past 
generation. 

Long before there was a thought of 
the city getting beyond the wall that 
hemmed in a few scattering houses, and 
when the Indian settlement, which after- 
wards became Greenwich Village, kept 
close to the water's edge, a line of low 
sand hills called the Zandtberg, stretched 
their curved way from where now Eighth 
Street crosses Broadway, ending where 
Varick Street meets Vandam. At the 
base of the hill to the north was Ma- 
netta Creek. 

The final elevation became known as 
Richmond Hill, and that, with a con- 
siderable tract of land, was purchased 
by Abraham Mortier, commissioner of 
the forces of George III. of England. 
In 1760 he built his home on the hill 
and called it also Richmond Hill. 
103 



NOOKS AND C O 1<. N E R S 

The house was occupied hv General 
Washington as his headquarters in 1776, 
and by \'ice-President Adams in 1788. 
Aaron Burr obtained it in 1797, enter- 
tained lavishly there, improved the 
grounds, constructed an artificial lake 
Pond^ long known as Burr's Pond, and set up 
a beautiful entrance gateway at what is 
now Macdougal and Spring Streets, 
which he passed through in 1804 when 
he went to fight his duel with Alexander 
Hamilton. 

Burr gave up the house in 180", and, 
the hill being cut awav in the opening 
of streets in i 817, the house was low- 
ered and rested on the north side of 
Charlton Street just east of V'arick. It 
became a theatre later and remained 
such until it was torn down in 1849. A 
quiet row of brick houses occupies the 
site now. 



St. John's What is now a pleasant little park 

Burying- i t i i /^i 

Ground encloscd by Hudson, Leroy and Clark- 

104 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

son Streets, was part of a plot set aside 
for a graveyard when St. John's Chapel 
was built. It was called St. John's 
Burying-Ground. Its early Hmits ex- 
tended to Carmine Street on one side 
and to Morton Street on the other. 
Under the law burials ceased there 
about 1850. There were 10,000 burials 
in the grounds, which, unlike the other 
Trinity graveyards, came to be neg- 
lected. The tombstones crumbled to 
decay, the weeds grew rank about them 
and the trees remained untrimmed and 
neglected. 

About 1890 property owners in the 
vicinity began steps to have the burying- 
ground made into a park. Conservative 
Trinity resisted the project until the city 
won a victory in the courts and the 
property was bought. Relatives of the 
dead were notified and some of the 
bodies were removed. In September, 
1 897, the actual work of transforming 
the graveyard into a park was begun. 

105 



NOOKS A N' D CORNERS 

Laborers with crowbars knocked over 
the tombstones that still remained and 
putting the fragments in a pit at the 
eastern end of the grounds covered 
them with earth to make a plav-spot for 
children. 

Bedford At Morton and Bedford Streets is 

Street T» 1 - 1 ' » * f A^i I 

Churcli the Bedford Street M. h. Church, 
The original structure was built in 1810 
in a green pasture. Beside it was a 
quiet graveyard, reduced somewhat in 
i8jo when the church was enlarged, 
and wiped out when the land became 
valuable and the present structure was 
set up in 1 S40. The church was built 
for the first congregation of Methodists in 
Greenwich V^illatre, formed in i 808 at the 
house of Samuel Walgrove at the north 
side of Morton Street close to Bleecker. 

Where 

Ihomas Thouias Paine — famous for his con- 

1 ainc Lived 

Ami Died nection with the American and French 
revolutions, but chiefly for his works, 
106 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

" The Age of Reason," favoring Deism 
against Atheism and Christianity ; and 
" Common Sense," maintaining the 
cause of the American colonies — died 
in Greenwich Village June 8,1809, hav- 
ing retired there in 1802. 

The final years of his life were passed 
in a small house in Herring (now 
Bleecker) Street. On the site is a double 
tenement numbered No. 293 Bleecker 
Street, southeast corner Barrow. This 
last named street was not opened until 
shortly after Paine's death. It was first 
called Reason Street, a compliment to the 
author of " The Age of Reason." This 
was corrupted to Raisin Street. In 1828 
it was given its present name. 

Shortly before his death Paine moved 
to a frame building set in the centre of 
a nearby field. Grove Street now 
passes over the site which is between 
Bleecker and West Fourth Streets, the 
back of the building having been where 
No. 59 Grove Street is now. 



107 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

About the time that Barrow Street 
was opened Grove Street was cut 
through. It was called Cozine Street, 
then Columbia, then Burrows, and 
finally, in i82cy, was changed to Grove. 
When the street was widened in i8j6, 
the house in which Paine had died, 
until tlicn left standing, was demolished. 

Admiral yj-j^. homcstcad of Admiral Sir Peter 

\N'arrcn ami • i i 

His Family \> arren occupied the ground now taken 
up in the solidlv built block bounded 
by Charles, Fourth, Bleecker and Perry 
Streets. The house was built in 1744, 
in the midst of green fields, and for 
more than a centurv it was the most 
important dwelling in Greenwich. Ad- 
miral Warren of the British Xavv was, 
next to the Governor, the most import- 
ant person in the Province. His house 
was the favorite resort of social and 
influential New York. The Admiral's 
influence and popularitv had a marked 
effect on the village, which, by his 
108 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

coming, was given an impetus that made 
it a thriving place. 

Of the three daughters of Admiral 
Warren, Charlotte, the eldest, mar- 
ried Willoughby, Earl of Abingdon ; 
the second, Ann, married Charles Fitz- 
roy, afterwards Baron Southampton, 
and Susannah, the youngest, married 
William Skinner, a Colonel of Foot. 
These marriages had their effect also on 
Greenwich Village, serving to continue 
the prosperity of the place. Roads 
which led through the district, of which 
the Warren family controlled a great 
part, were named in honor of the differ- 
ent family branches. The only name 
now surviving is that of Abingdon 
Square. 

In the later years of his life. Sir Peter 
Warren represented the City of West- 
minster in Parliament. He was buried 
in Westminster Abbey. 

In 1796 the State Prison was built on 
109 



NOOKS A N' D CORNERS 

s«»«c about tour acres of ground, surrounded 

bv high walls, and taking in the territory 
now enclosed by Washington, West, 
Christopher and Perry Streets. The 
site is now, for the most part, occupied 
by a brewery, but traces of the prison 
walls are yet to be seen in those 
of the brewerv. There was a wharf at 
the foot of Christopher Street. In 1826 
the prison was purchased bv the Cor- 
poration of the State. The construction 
of a new State Prison had begun at Sing 
Sing in 1825. Ini828 the male prison- 
ers were transferred to Sing Sing, and 
the female prisoners the next year. 

The yard of the earlv prison extended 
down to the river , there were fields 

Convict about and a wide stretch ot beach. It 
was here that the first svstem ot prison 
manufactures was organized. A convict 
named Noah Gardner, who was a shoe- 
maker, induced the prison officials to per- 
mit him the use ot his tools. In a short 
time he had trained most of the con- 



Labor 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

victs into a skilled body of shoemakers. 

The gathering together of a number 
of convicts in a workroom was at first 
productive of some disorder, owing 
to the difficulty of keeping them under 
proper discipline under the new con- 
ditions. In 1799 came the first riot. 
The keepers fired upon and killed sev- 
eral convicts. There was another re- 
volt in 1803. 

Gardner had been found guilty of 
forgery, but was reprieved on the gal- 
lows through the influence of the Society 
of Friends, of which he was a member, 
and sentenced to life imprisonment. 
Because of his services in organizing the 
prison work, he was liberated after serv- 
ing seven years. Becoming then a shoe 
manufacturer, he was successful for sev- 
eral years, when he absconded, taking 
with him a pretty Quakeress, and was 
never heard of again. 

Although the prison has been swept 



Qiiaint 
Houses in 
\Vieha\%ltcn 
Street 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

awav, an idea of its locality can he had 
from the low huildings at the west side 
of nearby Wiehawken Street. These 
buildin2;s have stood for more than 
a hundred years, having been erected 
before the prison. 



That part of Greenwich Village that 
was transformed from fields into a town 
in a few davs, during the vellow fever 
scare of 1822, centered at the point 
where West Eleventh Street crosses 
West Fourth Street. At this juncture 
was a cornfield on which, in two days, 
a hotel capable of accommodating three 
hundred guests was built. At the same 




fr 

Old Houic) 
Wicb*wken Si- 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

time a hundred other houses sprang up, 
as if by magic, on all sides. 

Bank Street was named in 1799. Bank street 
The year previous a clerk in the Bank 
of New York on Wall Street was one of 
the earliest victims of yellow fever, and 
the officials decided to take precautions 
in case of the bank being quarantined at 
a future time. Eight lots were pur- 
chased on a then nameless lane in Green- 
wich Village. The bank was erected 
there, and gave the lane the name of 
Bank Street. 

Washington Square was once a Pot- Washington 

01 Square 

ter's Field. A meadow was purchased 
by the city for this purpose in 1789, 
and the pauper graveyard was estab- 
lished about where the Washington 
Arch is now. 

Manetta Creek, coming from the 
north, flowed to the west of the arch 
site, crossed to what is now the western 
113 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

portion of the Square, ran through the 
present Minetta Street and on to the 
river. In 1795, during a yellow fever 
epidemic, the field was used as a com- 
mon graveyard. In 1797 the pauper 
graveyard which had been in the present 
Madison Square, was abandoned in favor 
of this one. There was a gallows on 
the ground and criminals were executed 
and interred on the spot as late as 1822. 
In 1823 the Potter's Field was aban- 
doned and removed to the present 
Bryant Park at Fortv-second Street and 
Sixth Avenue. In 1S2"", three and one 








- i 



Looking South from 
.Minetta Lane 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

half acres of ground were added to the 
plot and the present Washington Square 
was opened. 

Past the pauper graveyard ran an Obelisk Lane 
inland road to Greenwich Village. This 
extended from the Post Road (now the 
Bowery) at the present Astor Place near 
Cooper Union, continued in a direct 
line to about the position of the Wash- 
ington Arch, and from that point to the 
present Eighth Avenue just above Fif- 
teenth Street. This road, established 
through the fields in 1768, was called 
Greenwich Lane. It was also known 
as Monument Lane and Obelisk Lane. 
A small section of it still exists in Astor 
Place from Bowery to Broadway. A 
larger section is Greenwich Avenue from 
Eighth to Fourteenth Streets. Monu- 
ment Lane took its name from a monu- 
ment at Fifteenth Street where the road 
ended, which had been erected to the 
memory of General Wolfe, the hero of 

"5 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

Quebec. rhe monument disappeared 
in a mysterious way during the British 
occupation. It is thought to have been 
destroyed by soldiers. 

Graveyard \ fg^y fgef g^St of Sixth AvcnuC, On 

Street the south side of I'.leventh Street, is a 

brick wall and railing, behind which can 
be seen several battered tombstones in 
a triangular plot of ground. This is 
all that is lett of a Jewish graveyard 
established almost a century ago. 

Millicran's Lane was the continuation 
of Amos (now West Tenth) Street, from 
Greenwich Avenue to Twelfth Street 
where it joined the Union Road. I'his 
lane struck the line of Sixth Avenue 
where Kleventh Street is now. At the 
southwest corner of this junction the 
course of the lane can be seen yet in the 
peculiar angle of the side wall of a 
building there, and in a similar angle of 
other houses near by. Close by this 
corner the second graveyard of Shearith 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

Israel Synagogue was established early 
in this century. It took the place of 
the Beth Haim, or Place of Rest, down 
town, a remnant of which is to be seen 
in New Bowery off Chatham Square. 

The Eleventh Street graveyard, es- Milligan's 
tablished in the midst of green fields, 
fronted on Milligan's Lane and extended 
back no feet. When Eleventh Street 
was cut through under the conditions 
of the City Plan, in 1830, it passed 
directly through the graveyard, cutting 
it away so that only the tiny portion 
now there was left. At that time a new 
place of burial was opened in Twenty- 
first Street west of Sixth Avenue. 

At a point just behind the house Union 
numbered ;^2 Eleventh Street, midway 
of the block between Fifth and Sixth 
Avenues, Union Road had its starting- 
point. It was a short road, forming 
a direct communicating line between 
Skinner and Southampton Roads. Skin- 
ny 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

ner Road, running from Hudson River 
alon^ the line of the present Christopher 
Street, ended where Union Road began ; 
and Union Road met Southampton at 
what is now the corner of Fifteenth 
Street and Seventh Avenue. This 
point was also the junction of South- 
ampton and Great Kiln Roads. 

Kvidences of the Union Road are 
still to be seen in Twelfth Street, at 
the projecting angle of the houses num- 
bered 43 and 45. It was just at this 
point that Milligan's Lane ended. On 
1 hirteenth Street, the course of Union 
Road is shown by the slanting wall of a 
big business building, numbered 36. 

First In Twelfth Street, between Sixth and 

r^MP^K^"^" Seventh Avenues, is the First Reformed 
Presbvterian Church. The congregation 
was started as a praying society in 1790 
at the house of John Agnew at No. 9 
Peck Slip. In 1798 the congregation 
worshipped in a school house in Cedar 



church 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

Street. They soon after built their first 
church at Nos. 39 and 41 Chambers 
Street, where the American News Com- 
pany building is now. It was a frame 
building, and was succeeded in 181 8 by 
a brick building on the same site. In 
1 834 a new church was erected at Prince 
and Marion Streets. The foundation 
for the present church was laid in 1848, 
and the church occupied it in the follow- 
ing year. 

The New York Society Library, at Society 
107 University Place, near Fourteenth 
Street, claims to be the oldest institu- 
tion of its kind in America. It is cer- 
tainly the most interesting in historical 
associations, richness of old literature 
and art works. It is the direct outcome 
of the library established in 1700, 
with quarters in the City Hall, in Wall 
Street, by Richard, Earl of Bellomont, 
the Governor of New York. 

In 1754 an association was incorpo- 
119 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

rated for carrying on a library, and their 
collection, added to the library already 
in existence, was called the City Li- 
brary. The Board of Trustees con- 
sisted of the most prominent men in 
the city. In 1772 a charter was granted 
by George III, under the name of the 
New York Society Library. 

Durin^T the Revolutionary War the 
books became spoil for British soldiers. 
M;inv were destroyed and many sold. 
After the war the remains of the library 
were gathered from various parts of the 
citv and again collected in the Citv Hall. 
In 1784 the members ot the I'cdcral 
Coni2;ress deliberated in the library 
rooms. In 1795 the library was moved 
to Nassau Street, opposite the Middle 
Dutch Church; in i8j6 to Chambers 
Street; in 1H41 to Broadway and Leon- 
ard Street ; in 185J to the Bible House, 
and in 1S56 to the present building. 

At the point that is now Seventh 

ISO 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

Avenue and Fifteenth Street, then in- ^^^^^ KLiln 

Road 

tersected by the Union Road, the Great 
Kiln Road ended. Its continuation 
was called Southampton Road. From 
that point it continued to Nineteenth 
Street, east of Sixth Avenue, and then 
parallel with Sixth Avenue to Love 
Lane, the present Twenty-first Street. 

The line of this road, where it joined 
the Great Kiln Road, is still clearly 
shown in the oblique side wall of the 
house at the northwest corner of Sev- 
enth Avenue and Fifteenth Street. 
Here, also, it has a marked effect on 
the east wall of St. Joseph's Home for 
the Aged. The first-mentioned house, 
with the cutting through of the streets, 
has been left one of those queer trian- 
gular buildings, with full front and run- 
ning to a point in the rear. 

When the road reached what is now 
Sixteenth Street, a third of a block east 
of Seventh Avenue, it passed through 
the block in a sweeping curve to the 



N O O K. S AND CORNERS 

present corner of Seventeenth Street and 
Sixth Avenue. The evidence ot its 
passage is still to be seen in the tiny 
wooden houses buried in the centre of 
the block, which are remnants of a row 
Wfiivcrs' called Paisley Place, or Weavers* Row. 
This row was built during the vellow- 
fever agitation of 1822, and was occu- 
pied by Scotch weavers who operated 
their hand machines there. 

The road took its name from Sir 
Peter Warren's second daughter, who 
married Charles Fitzrov, who later be- 
came the Baron Southampton. 

Gravcyaril In Twentv-first Street, a little west 
Storc""^ "^ of Sixth Avenue, is the unused though 
not uncared-for graveyard of the Shear- 
ith Israel Synagogue. The graveyard 
cannot be seen from the street, but from 
the rear windows of a near-by dry-goods 
store a glimpse can be had of the ivy- 
covered receiving-vault and the time- 
grayed tombstones. 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

When this *' Place of Rest " was es- 
tablished the locality was all green fields. 
The graveyard had been forced from 
further down town by the cutting 
through of Eleventh Street in 1830. 
Interments were made in this spot until 
1852, when the cemetery was removed 
to Cypress Hills, L. I., the Common 
Council having in that year prohibited 
burials within the city limits. But 
though there were no burials, the con- 
gregation have persistently refused to 
sell this plot, just as they have the ear- 
lier plots, the remains of which are off 
Chatham Square and in Eleventh Street, 
near Sixth Avenue. 

Abingdon Road in the latter years Love Lane 
of its existence was commonly called 
Love Lane, and more than a century 
ago followed close on the line of the 
present Twenty-first Street from what 
is now Broadway to Eighth Avenue. It 
was the northern limit of a tract of land 
123 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

given bv the citv to Admiral Sir Peter 
Warren in recognition o\ his services at 
the capture of Louisburg. 

From this road, when the Warren 
estate was divided among the daughters 
of the Admiral, two roads, the South- 
ampton and the Warren, were opened 
through this upper part of the estate. 

The name Love Lane was given to 
the road in the latter part of the eigh- 
teenth centurv, and was retained until it 
was swallowed up in Twentv-first Street. 
This last was ordered opened in i 827, but 
was not actually opened until some years 
later. There is no record to show where 
the name came from. The generally 
accepted idea is that being a quiet and 
little traveled spot, it was looked upon 
as a lane where happy couples might 
drive, tar from the city, and amid green 
fields and stately trees confide the story 
of their loves. It was the longest drive 
from the town, bv wav of the Post Road, 
Bloomingdale Road and so across the 

«»4 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

west to Southampton, Great Kiln roads, 
through Greenwich Village and by the 
river road back to town. 

The road originally took its name 
from the oldest daughter of Admiral 
Warren, who married the Earl of Ab- 
ingdon. 

There are still traces ot Love Lane 
in Twenty-first Street. The two houses 
numbered 25 and 27 stood on the road. 
The houses 51, 53 and 55, small and 
odd appearing, are more closely identi- 
fied with the lane. When built, these 
houses were conspicuous and alone, at 
the junction where Southampton Road 
from Greenwich Village ran into Love 
Lane. They are thought to have been 
a single house serving as a tavern. 

Close by, at the northeast corner of 
Twenty-first Street and Sixth Avenue, 
the house with the gable roof is one 
that also stood on the old road, though 
built at a later date than the three next 

to it. 

125 



N (J CJ K S A N D CORNER S 

The road ended for many years about 
on the line with the present Kighth Ave- 
nue, where it ran into the Fitzroy 
Road. Some years previous to the lay- 
in£T out of the streets under the City 
Plan in i8i i, Love Lane was continued 
to Hudson River. Before it reached 
the river it was crossed, a little east of 
Seventh Avenue, hv the Warren Road, 
although there is no trace of the crossing 
now. 



Chelsea 
Village 



Although Chelsea Villac;e was long 
ago swallowed up by the city, and its 
boundaries blotted out by the rectane;u- 
lar lines of the plan under which the 
streets were mapped out in iSi i, there 
is still a sugt^estion of it 
in the green lawns and 
gray buildings of the Gen- 
eral Theolo- 
gical Semi- 
nary of the 
Protestant 







V^nart 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

Episcopal Church, which occupies the 
block between Twentieth and Twenty- 
first Streets, Ninth and Tenth Avenues. 
Chelsea got its name in 1750, when 
Captain Thomas Clarke, an old soldier, 
gave the name to his country seat, in 
remembrance of the English home for 
invalided soldiers. It was between two 
and three miles from the city, a stretch 
of country land along the Hudson River 
with not another house anywhere near 
it. The house stood, as streets are now, 
at the south side of Twenty-third Street, 
about two hundred feet west of Ninth 
Avenue, on a hill that sloped to the river. 
The captain had hoped to die in his 
retreat, but his home was burned to the 
ground during his severe illness, and he 
died in the home of his nearest neigh- 
bor. Soon after his death the house 
was rebuilt by his widow, Mrs. Mollie 
Clarke. The latter dying in 1802, a 
portion of the estate with the house 
went to Bishop Benjamin Moore, who 
127 



NOOKS A N I) CORNERS 

had married Mrs. Clarke's daughter, 
Charity. It passed from him in 1813 
to his son, Clement C. Moore. The 
latter reconstructed the house, and it 
stood until 1 850. 

Clement C. Moore's estate was in- 
cluded within the present lines of Eighth 
Avenue, Nineteenth to Twenty-fourth 
Streets and Hudson River. These are 
approximatelv the bounds ot Chelsea 
Village which grew up around the old 
Chelsea homestead. It came to be a 
thriving village, conveniently reached bv 
the road to (ireenwich and then bv 
Fitzroy Road ; or by the Bowerv Road, 
Bloomingdale, and then along Love 
Lane. 

In I 8 J I the streets were cut through 
and the village thereafter grew up on 
the projected lines of the City Plan. 
It was for this reason that Chelsea, when 
the city reached it, was merged into it 
so perfectly that there is not an imper- 
fect street line to tell where the village 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

had been and where the city joined it. 
There are houses of the old village still 
standing ; notably those still called the 
Chelsea Cottages in Twenty-fourth 
Street west of Ninth Avenue, and the row 
called the London Terrace in Twenty- 
third Street between Ninth and Tenth Terrace 
Avenues. 

The block on which the General 
Theological Seminary stands was given 
to the institution by Clement C. Moore, 
and was long called Chelsea Square. 
The cornerstone of the East Building 
was laid in 1825, and of the West Build- 
ing, which still stands, in 1835. 

It was this Clement C. Moore, living 
quietly in the village that had grown up 
around him, who wrote the child's poem 
which will be remembered longer than 
its writer — " 'Twas the Night before 
Christmas." 



129 



'1 c- 



n 



f: 







Ill 



Ill 

THE Oliver Street Baptist Church Oliver Street 
was built on the northwest corner church 
of OHver and Henry Streets in 1795. 
It was rebuilt in 1800, and again in 
1 8 19. Later it was burned, and finally 
restored in 1843. The structure is now 
occupied by the Mariners' Temple, 
and the record of its burning is to be 
seen on a marble tablet on the front wall. 

Oliver Street — that is, the two blocks 
from Chatham Square to Madison 
Street — was called Fayette Street before 
the name was changed to Oliver in 1825. 

James Street was once St. James 

133 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

Street. The change was made prior to 
1816. 

Mariners' Church, at 46 Catherine 
Street, was erected in 1854, on the 
southeast corner of Madison Street. 
Prior to that, and as far back as 1819, 
it had been at 76 Roosevelt Street. 

Madison Banker Street having become a bv- 

word, because of the objectionable char- 
acter of its inhabitants, the name was 
changed to Madison Street in 1826. 

Between Jefferson and Clinton Streets, 
and south of Henry, was a pond, the 
only bit o\ water which, in early days, 
emptied into the East River between 
what afterward became Roosevelt Street 
and Houston Street. A wet meadow, 
rather than a distinct stream, ex- 
tended from this pond to the river as an 
outlet. This became later the region ot 
ship\ ards. 

'34 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

On what is now Cherry Street, be- where 

^,. i T rr ' o Nathan Hale 

tween Clinton and Jerrerson btreets, was Hanged 
was the house of Col. Henry Rutgers, 
the Revolutionary patriot, and his farm 
extended from that point in all direc- 
tions. On a tree of this farm Nathan 
Hale, the martyr spy of the Revolution, 
was hanged, September 22, 1776. On 
this same farm the Church of the Sea and 
Land, still standing with its three-foot 
walls, at Market and Henry Streets, 
was built in 18 17. * 




Church of Sea & Land 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

In 182S, at the corner of Henrv and 
Scammel Streets, was erected All Saints' 
Church (Episcopal). It still stands, 
now hemmed in hv dwelling-houses. 
It is a low rock structure. A bit of 
green, a stunted tree and some shrubs 
still struL^L!:le throu[ih the bricks at the 
rear of the church, and can be seen 
through a tall iron railing from narrow 
Scammel Street. In 1S25 the church 
occupied a chapel on Grand Street at 
the corner of Columbia. 



First 
Tenement 



The first house designed especially 
House for many tenants was built in iSjj, 
in Water Street just east of Jackson, on 
which site is now included Corlears 
Hook Park. It was four stories in 
height, and arranged for one family on 
each fioor. It was built bv Thomas 
Price, and owned bv James P. Allaire, 
whose noted engine works were close by 
in Cherry Street, between Walnut (now 
jnckson) and Corlears Street. 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

Where Grand and Pitt Streets cross 
is the top of a hill formerly known as 
Mount Pitt. On this hill the building 
occupied by the Mount Pitt Circus was 
built in 1826. It was burned in 1828. 

At Grand, corner of Ridge Street, is 
the St. Mary's Church (Catholic), which 
was built in 1833, a rough stone struc- 
ture with brick front and back. In 1826 
it was in Sheriff, between Broome and 
Delancey Streets. It had the first 
Roman Catholic bell in the city. In 
1 83 1 the church was burned by a burg- 
lar, and the new structure was built 
in Grand Street. 

Actual work on the pier for the new 
East River Bridge, at the foot of 
Delancey Street, was begun in the 
spring of 1897. 

Much confusion has arisen, and still Manhattan 

... . ^ , . Island 

exists, in the designation or the territory 

137 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

under the names of Manhattan Island 
and Island of Manhattan. The two 
islands a hundred \ ears ago were widely 
different bodies. They are joined now. 

Manhattan Island was the name given 
to a little knoll of land which lav with- 
in the limits of what is now Third, 
Houston and Lewis Streets and the 
East River. At high tide the place was 
a veritable island. There seems to be 
still a suggestion of it in the low build- 
ings which occupv the ground of the 
former island. About the ancient 
boundary, as though closing it in, are 
tall tenements and factory buildings. 
On the grounds of this old island the 
first recreation pier was built, in 1S97, 
at the foot of Third Street. 

The Island of Manhattan has always 
been the name applied to the land oc- 
cupied bv the old Citv of \ew York, 
now the Borough of Manhattan. 

In the heart of the block surrounded 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

by Rivington, Stanton, Goerck and 

Mangln Streets, there is still to be seen 

the remains of a slanting-roofed 

.;. . market, closed in by the houses 

;;? which have been built about 

I r; -^ it. It was setup in 1827, 

iIn A and named Manhattan Mar- 

V: J ket after the nearby island. 



V 



^•M 



s- 



Work on the Hamilton Bone 
Fish Park was begun in 1896, 







Done All e 



7 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

in the space hounded by Stanton, 
Houston, Pitt and Sheriff Streets, then 
divided into two blocks by Willett 
Street. This was a congested, tene- 
ment-house vicinity, where misery and 
poverty pervaded most of the dingy 
dwellings. In wiping out the two sol- 
idly built-up blocks, Bone Alley, well 
known in police history for a genera- 
tion, was effaced. On the west side of 
Willett Street, midway of the block. 
Bone Alley had its start and extended 
sixty feet into the block — a twentv-five- 
foot space between tall tenements, run- 
ning plump into a row of houses ex- 
tending horizontal with it. When these 
houses were erected they each had long 
gardens, which were built upon when 
the land became too valuable to be 
spared for Hower-beds or breathing- 
spots. In time they became the homes 
of rag- and bone-pickers, and thus the 
alley which led to them got its name, 
which it kept even after the rag- 
140 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

pickers and the law-breakers who suc- 
ceeded them had been driven away by 
the poHce. 

There was, forty years ago, a well of 
good, drinkable water at the point 
where Rivington and Columbia Streets 
now cross. 

The little frame house at the north- "Mother" 

^ T-, . . 1 i^i- Mandelbaum 

west corner or Kivmgton and Clmton 
Streets was the home of " Mother " 
Frederica Mandelbaum for many years, 
until she was driven from the city in 
1884. This "Queen of the Crooks," 
receiver of stolen goods and friend of 
all the criminal class, compelled, in a 
sense, the admiration of the police, who 
for years battled in vain to outwit her 
cleverness. When the play, " The Two 
Orphans," was first produced, Mrs. 
Wilkins, as the " Frochard," copied the 
character of " Mother " Mandelbaum 
and gave a representation of the woman 
141 



N () () K S A N I) CORNERS 

that all who knew the original recog- 
nized. Other plays were written, and 
also many stories, having her as a cen- 
tral figure. She died at Hamilton, On- 
tario, in I 894. 

At the crossing of Rivington and 
Suffolk Streets was the source of Stuy- 
vesant's Creek. From there, as the 
streets exist now, it crossed Stanton 
Street, near Clinton ; Houston, at Sheriff; 
Second, near Houston ; then wound 
around to the north of Manhattan Isl- 
and, and emptied into the I'.ast River 
at Third Street. 

Allen I PI Rivington Street, between Ludlow 

Memorial and Orchard, is the Allen Street Mem- 
Church ^^-^^i Church (M. E.), built in 18.S8. 
The original Church, which was built 
in 1810, istwo blocks awav, in Allen 
Street, between Delancey and Rivington 
Streets. It was rebuilt in i8j6, and 
when the new RivinL^ton Street struc- 
141 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

ture was erected the old house was sold 
to a Jewish congregation, who still oc- 
cupy it as a synagogue. 

In Grand Street, between Essex and 
Ludlow Streets, the Essex Market was 
built in 1818. The court next to it, in 
Essex Street, was built in 1856. 



le Stone 



On the Bowery, opposite Rivington ^^ 
Street, is a milestone (one or three that Bowery 
yet remain) which formerly marked the 
distance from the City Hall, in Wall 
Street, on the Post Road. The land 
to the east of the Bowery belonged to 
James De Lancey, who was Chief Jus- 
tice of the Colony in 1733, and in 1753 
became Lieuten- 
ant-Governor. A 
lane led from the 
Bowery, close by 
the milestone, to 
his country house, 
which was at the 







NOOKS AND CORNERS 

present northwest corner of Delancey 
and Chrystie Streets. It was in this 
house that he died suddenly in 1760. 
James De Lancey was the eldest son of 
Ktienne (Stephen) De Lancey, who 
built the house which afterwards was 
known as Kraunces' Tavern, and which 
still stands at Broad and Pearl Streets. 
He later built the homestead at Broad- 
way and Cedar Street. Originally the 
name was " de Lanci." It became " de 
Lancy " in the seventeenth century, and 
was Anclici/.cd in the eighteenth century 
to '* De Lancey." 

Where Grand Street crosses Mul- 
berrv was, until 1802, the family burial- 
vault of the Bayard family, it having 
been the custom of early settlers to bury 
their dead near their homesteads. The 
localitv was called Bunker Hill. 



^'- St. Patrick's Church, enclosed now 

Patrick's 

Church by the high wall at Mott and Prince 

•44 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

Streets, was completed in 1 8 1 5, the cor- 
nerstone having been laid in 1809. ^^ 
was surrounded by meadows and great 
primitive trees. This region was so 
wild that in 1820 a fox was killed in 
the churchyard. In 1866 the interior 
of the church was destroyed by fire. 
It was at once reconstructed in its pres- 
ent form. Amongst others buried in 
the vaults are "Boss" John Kelly, 
Vicar-General Starr and Bishop Con- 
nelly, first resident bishop of New York. 

At Prince and Marion Streets, north- 
west corner, the house in which President 
James Monroe lived while in the city 
still stands. 

The St. Nicholas Hotel was at Broad- A" 

, p, . ^ , , Unsolved 

way and Sprmg Street, and on the crime 
ground floor John Anderson kept a 
tobacco store, to which the attention of 
the entire country was directed in July, 
1842, because of the murder of Mary 

145 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

Rogers. This tragedy gave Kdgar Allan 
Poe material for his story '' I he Mys- 
tery of Marie Roget," into which he 
introduced every detail of the actual 
happening. Mary Rogers was a sales- 
woman in the tobacco store, and being 
young and pretty she attracted consid- 
erable attention. She disappeared one 
July day, and, soon after, her body was 
found drowned near the Sibyl's Cave at 
Hoboken. The deepest mystery sur- 
rounded her evident murder, and much 
interest was taken in attempts at a solu- 
tion, but it remained an unsolved 
crime. 

On the east side of Broadway, between 
Prince and Houston Streets, on Julv 4, 
I 828, William Niblo opened his Garden, 
Hotel and I heatre, to be known for 
many years thereafter as Niblo's Garden. 
Prior to that, he had kept the Bank 
Coffee House, at William and Pine 
Streets. 

146 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

The Metropolitan Hotel was built in Niblo's 
Niblo's Garden, on the corner that is ^^"^''" 
now Broadway and Prince Street, in 
1852, at a cost of a million dollars. 
The theatre in the hotel building was 
called Niblo's Garden. The building 
was demolished in 1894, and a business 
block was put up on the site. 

Across the street from Niblo's, on 
Broadway, in a modest brick house, 
lived, at one time, James Fenimore 
Cooper, the novelist. 

At No. 624 Broadway, between 
Houston and Bleecker Streets, was Laura 
Keene's theatre. On March i, 1858, 
Polly Marshall made her first appear- 
ance on any stage at that theatre. Later 
it became the Olympic Theatre. 

At Broadway and Bleecker Streets, a 
well was drilled, in 1832, which was four 
hundred and forty-eight feet deep, and 

147 



NOOKS AND (. O R N E R S 

which yielded forty-four thousand gal- 
lons of water a dav. 

J"P'" Trinicr Hall was at No. 677 Broad- 

Hall * ' [ ^ 

way, near Bond Street. Adelina I^atti 
appeared there on September 22, 1852, 
when ten years old, giving evidence of 
her future greatness. She sang there 
for some time, usuallv accompanied bv 
the bov violinist, Paul Julien. 

Tripler Hall had been renamed the 
Metropolitan Hall, when it was de- 
stroyed by fire in 1 S54. l.afarge House, 
which stood next it, was also burned. 
The house was rebuilt on the site, and 
opened in September, 1S54, under the 
name of the New \ Ork Theatre and 
Metropolitan Opera House. 

Rachel the great was first seen in 
America at this house, September ^, 
1855. Later the house became the 
Winter Garden. 

The first marble-tronted houses in 

14« 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

the city were built on Broadway, oppo- ^'"^^ 
site Bond Street, in 1825. They were Fronted 
called the Marble Houses, and attracted houses 
much attention. Being far out of the 
city, excursions were made to view them. 
Afterwards they became the Tremont 
House, and are still in use as a hotel. 

A pipe for a well was sunk in Broad- 
way, opposite Bond Street, in April, 
1827, it being thought that enough 
water for the supply of the immediate 
neighborhood could be obtained there- 
from. The water was not found, how- 
ever. 

No. 3 1 Bond Street was the scene of Burdell 
a celebrated murder. The house is 
torn down now, but it was identical with 
the one which now stands at No. 29. 
On January 3, 1857, Dr. Harvey Bur- 
dell, a dentist, was literally butchered 
there, being stabbed fifteen times. A 
portion of the house had been occupied 
149 



N (3 O K. S AND CORNERS 

by a widow named Cunningham, and 
her two daughters. After the murder, 
Mrs. Cunningham claimed a widow's 
share of the Doctor's estate, on the 
ground that she had been married to 
him some months before. This claim 
started an investigation, which resulted 
in Mrs. Cunningham's being suspected 
ot the crime, arrested, tried and acquitted. 
Soon after her acquittal, she attempted 
to secure control of the entire Burdell 
estate, by claiming that she had given 
birth to an heir to the propertv. The 
scheme failed, tor the phvsician through 
whom she obtained a new-born child 
from Bellevue Hospital, disclosed the 
plot to District Attornev A. Oakev 
Hall. The woman and her daughters 
left the city suddenly, and were not 
heard of again. The mystery of the 
murder was nc\er solved. 

The part of Houston Street east of 
the Bowerv was, prior to No\ember, 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

1833, called North Street. At the time 
the change in names was made the street 
was raised. Between Broadway and the 
Bowery had been a wet tract of land 
many feet below the grade. In 1844 
the street was extended from Lewis 
Street to the East River. 

The Bleecker Street Bank, which 
was just east of Broadway, on the north 
side of Bleecker Street, was moved in 
October, 1897, to Twenty-first Street 
and Fourth Avenue, and called The 
Bank for Savings. It had originally 
been in the New York Institute Build- 
ing in City Hall Park. 

In the heart of the block inclosed by Marble 
the Bowery, Second Avenue, Second 
and Third Streets, is a hidden grave- 
yard. It is the New York Marble 
Cemetery, and so completely has it 
been forgotten that its name no longer 
appears in the City Directory. On four 

151 



N (J (> K S A N I) C () R N E R S 

sides it is hemmed about by tenements 
and business buildings, so that one 
could walk past it for a lifetime without 
knowing that it was there. On the 
Second Avenue side, the entrance is 
formed by a narrow passage between 
houses, which is closed by an iron gate- 
way. But tile Lj:ate is always locked, 
and at the opposite end of the passage 



r^^ ■•:■.:• v.; 



-Mll:|,^;, 




^i. 













.& 



JT-' ■k.vi' 



Enlr4ftcc \o 
Miiole Crnttery 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

is another gate of wood set in a brick 
wall, so high that nothing but the tops 
of trees can be seen beyond it. From 
the upper rear windows of the neigh- 
boring tenements a view of the place 
can be had. It is a wild spot, four 
hundred feet by one hundred, covered 
by a tangled growth of bushes and 
weeds, crossed by neglected paths, and 
enclosed by a wall seventeen feet high 
There is no sign of a tombstone. In 
the southwest corner is a deadhouse of 
rough hewn stone. On the south wall 
the names of vault owners are chiseled. 
Among these were some of the best 
known New Yorkers fifty years ago. 
The records of the city show that this 
land was owned by Henry Eckford and 
Marion, his wife. They deeded it to 
Anthony Dey and George W. Strong 
when the cemetery corporation was or- 
ganized, July 30, 1830. There were 
one hundred and fifty-six vaults, and 
fifteen hundred persons were buried 
153 



NOOKS AN'D CORNERS 

there. I'his cemetery is forgotten 
almost as completelv as its own dead, 
and its memories do not molest the 
dwellers in the surrounding tenements 
who overlook it from their rear win- 
dows, and use it as a sort ot dumping- 
ground for all useless things that can 
readilv he thrown into it. 

The Second There is another Marble Cemetery 

Marble ,.,,.. . ^ . '. 

Cemetery wllich hlStOrUUlS SOHlCtimCS COntuSC With 

this hidden gravevard, namely, one on 
Second Street, between First and Sec- 
ond Avenues. Some oi the larger 
merchants of the city bought the 
ground in i8j2, and created the New 
York Citv Marble Cemetery. Among 
the oric;inal owners was Robert Lenox. 
When he died, in 1839, his body was 
placed in a vault of the Pirst Presbyte- 
rian Church at 16 Wall Street. When 
that church was removed to I'ltrh 
Avenue and Twelfth Street the remains 
of Lenox with others were removed to 

«S4 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

this Marble Cemetery. The body of 
President James Monroe was first in- 
terred here, but was removed in 1859 
to Virginia. Thomas Addis Emmet, 
the famous jurist, is also buried here. 
One of the most conspicuous monu- 
ments in St. Paul's churchyard, the 
shaft at the right of the church, was 
erected to the memory of Emmet. A 
large column on the other side of the 
church preserves the memory of another 
man whose body does not lie in the 
churchyard, for William James Mac- 
neven was interred in the burying- 
ground of the Riker family at Bowery 
Bay, L. I. 

In Second Street, between Avenue 
A and First Avenue, stood a Metho- 
dist church, and beside it a grave- 
yard, until 1840; when the building 
was turned into a public school. There 
were fifteen hundred bodies in the 
yard, but they were not removed to 
155 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

Evergreen Cemetery until i860. Only 
fifteen bodies were claimed bv relatives. 
One man who applied for his father's 
body refused that offered him, claiming 
that the skull was too small, and that 
some mistake had been made in disin- 
terment. 

Second Street Methodist Episcopal 
Church, between Avenues C and 1), 
was built in i8j2, the congregation 
having previously worshipped in private 
houses in the vicinity. At one time 
this was the most prominent and 
wealthiest church on the eastern side of 
the city. 

Bouwtric The Bouwerie Village was another of 

^^'^ the little settlements — once a busv spot, 
but now so ert'aced that every outline of 
its existence is blotted out. It centred 
about the site of the present St. Mark's 
Church, Second Avenue and Tenth 
Street. In 1 651, when Peter Stuvve- 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

sant, the last of the Dutch Governors, 
had ruled four years, he purchased the 
Great Bouwerie, a tract of land extend- 
ing two miles along the river north of 
what is now Grand Street, taking in a 
section of the present Bowery and Third 
Avenue. As there was, from time to 
time, trouble with the Indians, the 
Governor ordered the dwellers on his 
bouwerie, as well as those on adjoining 
bouweries, to form a village and gather 
there for mutual protection at the first 
sign of an outbreak. Very soon the 
settlement included a blacksmith's shop, 
a tavern and a dozen houses. In this 
way the Bouwerie Village was started. 
Peter Stuyvesant in time built a chapel, 
and in it Hermanus Van Hoboken, the 
schoolmaster, after whom the city of 
Hoboken is named, preached. Years 
after the founding of the village, when 
New Amsterdam had become New 
York, and when the old Governor had 
returned from Holland, where he had, 
157 



Grave of 

Ptter 

Stuyvesant 



NOOKS AN'D CORNERS 

before the States-General, fought for 
vindication in so readily giving up the 
province to the English, Stuyvesant 
returned to end his days in the Bouwerie 
Village. He died there at the age of 
eighty, and was buried in the graveyard 
of the Bouwerie Church. St. Mark's 
Church, at Tenth Street and Second 
Avenue, stands on the site of the old 
church, and a memorial stone to Peter 
Stuyvesant is still to be seen under the 
porch. It reads : 



IN THIS VAULT LIES BURIED 

PETRUS STUYVESANT, 

LATE CAPTAIN-GENERAL AND GOVERNOR IN CHIEF 

OF AMSTERDAM IN NEW NETHERLAND 

NOW CALLED NEW YORK 

AND THE DUTCH WEST INDIES, DIED IN A. D. I 67!',' 

AGED 80 YEARS. 



When Judith, the widow of Peter 
Stuvvesant, died, in 1692, she left the 
church in which the old Governor had 
worshipped to the Dutch Reformed 
Church. A condition was that the 



158 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

Stuyvesant vault should be forever pro- 
tected. By 1793 the church had fallen 
into decay. Then another Peter Stuy- 
vesant, great-grandson of the Dutch 
Governor, who was a vestryman of 
Trinity Church, gave the site and sur- 
rounding lots, together with $2,000, 
and the Trinity Corporation added 
$12,500, and erected the present St. 
Mark's Church. The cornerstone 
was laid in 1795 and the building com- 
pleted in 1799. It had no steeple until 
1829, when that portion was added. 
In 1858 the porch was added. In 
the churchyard were buried the remains 
of Mayor Philip Hone and of Governor 
Daniel D. Tompkins. It was here 
that the body of Alexander T. Stewart 
rested until stolen. Close by the church 
wa^ the mansion of Governor Stuyve- 
sant. It was an imposing structure for 
those days, built of tiny bricks brought 
from Holland. A fire destroyed the 
house at the time of the Revolution. 

159 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

When Peter Stuyvesant returned 
from Holland he brought with him a 
pear tree, which he planted in a garden 
near his Bouwerie Village house. This 
tree flourished for more than two hun- 
dred years. At Thirteenth Street and 
Third Avenue, on the house at the 
northeast corner, is a tablet inscribed : 



ON THIS CORNER GREW 
PETRUS STUYVESANT's PEAR TREE 



RECALLED TO HOLLAND IN I 664, 

ON HIS RETURN 

HE BROUGHT THE PEAR TREE 

AND PLANTED IT 

AS HIS MEMORIAL, 

" BY WHICH," SAID HE, "MY NAME 

MAY BE REMEMBERED." 

THE PEAR TREE FLOURISHED 

AND BORE FRUIT FOR OVER 

TWO HUNDRED YEARS. 

THIS TABLET IS PLACED HERE BY 

THE HOLLAND SOCIETY 

OF NEW YORK. 

SEPTEMBER, 189O. 

160 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

In 1785 half a dozen persons in the ^'■'s^ 
Bouwerie Village, then scattering to the schoof 
east from the site of Cooper Union, 
met at the "Two Mile Stone" — so 
called from being two miles from Fed- 
eral Hall — in the upper room of John 
Coutant's house, on the site where 
Cooper Institute stands now. The 
room was used as a shoe store during 
the week. Here, on Sundays, ministers 
from the John Street Church instructed 
converts. Peter Cooper, who was a 
member of the church, a few years later 
conceived the idea of connecting the 
school with the church. The organi- 
zation was perfected, and he was chosen 
Superintendent of this, the first Sunday 
School of New York. 

The quarters becoming cramped, in 
1795 the congregation moved to a two- 
story building a block away, on Nicho- 
las William Street. This street, long 
since blotted out, extended from what 
is now Fourth Avenue and Seventh 
161 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

Street, across the Cooper Institute site 
and part of the adjoining block, to 
Eighth (now St. Mark's Place), midway 
of the block between Third and Second 
Avenues. The street was named after 
Nicholas William Stuyvesant. When 
the old John Street Church was taken 
down, in 1817, the timber from it was 
used to erect a church next to the Sun- 
day School (called the Academy). This 
church was called the Bowery Village 
Village Church. In 1830, the Bowery Village 
Church Church having been wiped out by the ad- 
vancing streets of the City Plan, Nicho- 
las William Street went with it, and a 
church was then established a short dis- 
tance to the east, on the lineof what is now 
Seventh Street, north side, and this be- 
came the Seventh Street Church. In 
1837 persons living near by who ob- 
jected to the church revivals presented 
the trustees with two lots, nearer Third 
Avenue. There a new church was built, 
which still stands. 

162 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

Vauxhall Garden occupied (according Second 
to the present designation of the streets) Garden 
the space south of Astor Place, between 
Fourth Avenue and Broadway, to the 
Hne of Fifth Street. Fourth Avenue 
was then Bowery Road, and the main 
entrance to the Garden was on that side, 
opposite the present Sixth Street. At 
Broadway the Garden narrowed down 
to a V shape. On this ground, for many 
years, John Sperry, a Swiss, cultivated 
fruits and flowers, and when he had 
grown old he sold his estate, in 1799, 
to John Jacob Astor. The latter leased 
it to a Frenchman named Delacroix, 
who had previously conducted the Vaux- 
hall Garden on the Bayard Estate, close 
by the present Warren and Greenwich 
Streets. During the next eight years 
Delacroix transformed his newly-ac- 
quired possession into a pleasure garden, 
by erecting a small theatre and sum- 
mer-house, and by setting out tables 
and seats under the trees on the 
163 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

grounds, and booths with benches around 
the inside close up to the high board fence 
that enclosed the Garden. He called 
the place Vauxhall, thereby causing 
some confusion to historians, who often 
confound this Garden with the earlier 
one of the same name. This last 
Vauxhall was situated a mile out of town 
on the Bowery Road. It was an attrac- 
tive retreat, and the tableaux were so 
fine, the ballets so ingenius and the sing- 
ing of such excellence, that the resort 
became immensely popular, and re- 
mained so continuously until the Garden 
was swept out of existence in 1855. 
Admission to the grounds was free, 
and to the theatre two shillings. In its 
last years it was a favorite place for the 
holding of large public meetings. 

Cooper Cooper Union, at the upper end of 

Union , r. , •, . o 

the rJowery, was built m 1854. reter 

Cooper, merchant and philanthropist, 

made the object of his life the establish- 

164 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

ment of an institution designed espe- 
cially to give the working classes oppor- 
tunity for self-education better than the 
existing institutions afforded. His store 
was on the site of the present building, 
which he founded. By a deed executed 
in 1859 the institution, with its incomes, 
he devoted to the instruction and im- 
provement of the people of the United 
States forever. The institution has 
been taxed to its full capacity since its 
inception. From time to time it has 
been enriched by gifts from Mr. Cooper's 
heirs and friends. The statue of Peter 
Cooper, in the little park in front of the 
building, was unveiled May 28th, 1897. 
It is the work of Augustus St. Gaudens, 
once a pupil in the Institute. 

On a part of the site of Cooper Union, 
at the east side of what was then the 
Bowery, and what is now Fourth Ave- 
nue, stood a house which was said 
to have been haunted. It was demol- 
165 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

ished to make way for Cooper Union. 
No permanent tenant, it is said, had oc- 
cupied it for sixty years. It was a peaked- 
roofed brick structure, two stories high. 

The house of Peter Cooper was on 
the site of the present Bible House, at 
Eighth Street and Third Avenue. He 
removed in 1820 to Twenty-eighth 
Street and Fourth Avenue, and his 
dwelling may still be seen there. 

Astor Astor Place is part of old Greenwich 

Lane, which led from the Bowery Lane 
past the pauper cemetery, where Wash- 
ington Square is now, over the sand 
hills where University Place now is, 
and took the line of the present Green- 
wich Avenue. This was also called 
Monument Lane, because of a monu- 
ment to the memorv of General Wolfe 
erected on the spot where the road 
ended, at the junction of Eighth Avenue 
and Fifteenth Street. 
166 



Place 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

Astor Place, as flir as Fifth Avenue, 
was called Art Street when it was changed 
from a road to a street. The continu- 
ation of Astor Place to the east, now 
Stuyvesant Street, was originally Stuy- 
vesant Road, and extended to the river 
at about Fifteenth Street. It was also 
called Art when it became a street. 
On the south side of this thoroughfare, 
just west of Fourth Avenue, Charlotte 
Temple lived in a small stone house. 

At the head of Lafayette Place, 
fronting on Astor Place, is a building 
used at this time as a German Theatre. 
It was built for Dr. Schroeder, once the 
favorite preacher of the city, of whom 
it was said that if anyone desired to know 
where Schroeder preached, he had only 
to follow the crowds on Sunday. But 
he became dissatisfied and left Trinity 
for a church of his own. He very soon 
gave up this church, and for a time the 
building was occupied by St. Ann's 
167 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

Roman Catholic congregation. After- 
ward it became a theatre and failed 
to succeed. 

The ground at the junction of Astor 
Place and Eighth Street was made 
a public square in 1836. In the midst 
of it may now be seen a statue of 
Samuel S. Cox. 

Scene of Astor Place Opera House, at the iunc- 

Forrest- . 

Macready tion of Eighth Street and Astor Place, 
^'°^^ where Clinton Hall stands now, was 

built in 1847. It was a handsome 
theatre for those days, and contained 
eighteen hundred seats. It was opened 
on November 22nd with " Ernani." 
On May 7th, 1849, at this house oc- 
curred the first of the Macready riots. 
The bitter jealousy existing between 
William Charles Macready, the English 
actor, and Edwin Forrest, which had 
assumed the proportions of an inter- 
national quarrel, so far as the two actors 
168 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

and their friends were concerned, was 
the cause. The admirers of Forrest 
sought, on this night, to prevent the 
performance of " Macbeth," and a riot 
ensued in which no particular damage 
was done. On May loth, in response 
to a petition signed by many prominent 
citizens, Macready again sought to play 
" Macbeth." An effort was made 
to keep all Forrest sympathizers from 
the house. Many, however, gained ad- 
mission, and the performance was again 
frustrated. The ringleaders were ar- 
rested. A great crowd blocked Astor 
Place, and an assault upon the theatre 
was attempted. Macready escaped by 
a rear door. The Seventh Regiment 
and a troop of cavalry cleared Eighth 
Street and reached Astor Place. The 
mob resisted. The Riot Act was read. 
That producing no effect, and the assault 
upon the building and the soldiers de- 
fending it becoming more violent each 
moment, the mob was fired upon. 
169 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

Three volleys were fired. Thirty-four 
persons were killed and some hundred 
injured. Over one hundred soldiers 
and many policemen were also hurt. 

On August 30th, 1852, the name of 
the house was changed to the New 
York Theatre, under the direction of 
Charles R. Thorne. In a month's 
time he gave up the venture and Frank 
Chanfrau took it up. He also aban- 
doned it after a few weeks. 

Clinton Jn 1 8 C4. the Opera House was re- 

Hall ^^ 1 . 1 , 1 A/r 

constructed and occupied by the Mer- 
cantile Library. It was given the name 
of Clinton Hall, which had been the 
name of the library's first home in Beek- 
man Street. This building in time gave 
way to the present Clinton Hall on 
the same site. 

Lafayette Lafayette Place was opened through 

the Vauxhall Garden in 1826. 

The Astor Library, in Lafayette 
Place, was completed in 1853, and 
170 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

was opened in 1854. The site cost 
125,000. 

The Middle Dutch Reformed Church 
was built in Lafayette Place in 1839, ^^ 
the northwest corner of Fourth Street af- 
ter its removal from Nassau and Cedar 
Streets. A new church was built at 
Seventh Street and Second Avenue in 
1844. In the Lafayette Place building 
was a bell which had been cast in Hol- 
land in 1 73 I, and which had first been 
used when the church was in Nassau 
Street. It was the gift of Abraham de 
Peyster, and now hangs in the Reformed 
Church at Fifth Avenue and Forty- 
eighth Street. 

Next to this church, for many years, 
lived Madam Canda, who kept the 
most fashionable school for ladies of a 
generation ago. Her beautiful daugh- 
ter was dashed from a carriage, and killed 
on her eighteenth birthday — the age at 
which she was to make her debut into so- 
ciety. The entire city mourned her loss. 
171 



La Grange 
Terrace 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

Soon after Lafayette Place was 
opened, La Grange Terrace was built. 
It was named after General Lafayette's 
home In France. The row is still 
prominent on the west side of the thor- 
oughfare, and is known as Colonnade 
Row. A riot occurred at the time it 
was built, the masons of the city being 
aroused because the stone used in the 
structure was cut by the prisoners in 
Sing Sing prison. 

John Jacob Astor lived on this street. 
He died March 29th, 1848, and was 
buried from the home of his son, Wil- 
liam B. Astor, just south of the library 
building. 



Sailors' 

Snug 

Harbor 



A line drawn through Astor Place 
and continued to the Washington Arch 
in Washington Square, through Fifth 
Avenue to the neighborhood of Tenth 
Street, with Fourth Avenue as an 
eastern boundary, would roughly en- 
close what used to be the Eliot estate 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

in the latter part of the eighteenth cen- 
tury. It was a farm of about twenty- 
one acres in T790, when it was pur- 
chased for five thousand pounds from 
" Baron " Poelnitz, by Captain Robert 
Richard Randall, who had been a ship- 
master and a merchant. Randall dy- 
ing in 1 801, bequeathed the farm for 
the founding of an asylum for superan- 
nuated sailors, together with the man- 
sion house in which he had lived. The 
house stood, approximately, at the pres- 
ent northwest corner of Ninth Street 
and Broadway. It was the intention of 
Captain Randall that the Sailors' Snug 
Harbor should be built on the property, 
and the farming land used to raise all 
vegetables, fruit and grain necessary for 
the inmates. There were long years of 
litigation, however, for relatives con- 
tested the will. When the case was 
settled in 1831, the trustees had decided 
to lease the land, and to purchase the 
Staten Island property where the Asy- 

173 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

lum is now located. The estate, at the 
time of Captain Randall's death, yielded 
an annual income of ^4,000. At pres- 
ent the income is about $400,000 a 
year. It is conceded that the property 
would have increased more rapidly in 
value had it been sold outright, instead 
of becoming leasehold property in per- 
petuity. 

Many efforts have been made to cut 
through Eleventh Street from Fourth 
Avenue to Broadway. The first was in 
1830, when the street was open on the 
lines of the City Plan. Hendrick Bre- 
voort, whose farm adjoined the Sailors' 
Snug Harbor property, had a home- 
stead directly in the line of the proposed 
street, between Fourth Avenue and 
Broadway. He resisted the attempted 
encroachment on his home so success- 
fully that the street was not opened 
through that block. He was again sim- 
ilarly successful in 1849, when ^^ ordi- 
174 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

nance was passed for the removal of his 
house and the opening of the street. 

Grace Church, at Tenth Street and ^""^^^ 

, ^ T-» Church 

Broadway, was completed in 1846. Pre- 
vious to that date it had been on the 
southwest corner of Broadway and Rec- 
tor Street, opposite Trinity Church. 

There is a reason for the sudden bend 
in Broadway at Tenth Street, close 
by Grace Church. The Bowery Lane, 
which is now Fourth Avenue, curved 
in passing through what is now Union 
Square until, at the line of the present 
Seventeenth Street it turned and took a 
direct course north and was from there- 
on called the Bloomingdale Road. 
This road to Bloomingdale was opened 
long before Broadway, and it was in 
order to let the latter connect as directly 
as possible with the straight road north 
that the direction of Broadway was 
changed about 1806 by the Tenth 

175 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

Street bend and a junction effected with 
the other road at the Seventeenth Street 
line. 

At Thirteenth Street and Fourth 
Avenue there was constructed in 1834 
a tank which was intended to turnish 
water for extinguishing fires. It had a 
capacity of 230,000 gallons, and was 
one hundred feet above tide water. 
Water was forced into it by a i 2-horse 
power engine from a well and conduct- 
ing galleries at the present Tenth 
Street and Sixth Avenue, on the site of 
the Jefferson Market Prison. 

Wallack's In I 86 1 James W. Wallack moved 
from Wallack's Lyceum at Broome 
Street, and occupied the new Wallack's, 
now the Star Theatre, at Thirteenth 
Street and Broadway. His last appear- 
ance was when he made a little speech 
at the close of the season of 1862. He 
died in i 864. 

176 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

Union Square was provided for in Union 
the City Plan, under the name of Union ^'^"'"'' 
Place. The Commissioners decided 
that the Place was necessary, as an 
opening for fresh air would be needed 
when the city should be built up. 
Furthermore, the union of so many 
roads intersecting at that point required 
space for convenience ; and if the roads 
were continued without interruption the 
land would be divided into such small 
portions as to be valueless for building 
purposes. 

The fountain in the square was oper- 
ated for the first time in 1842, on the 
occasion of the great Croton Water 
celebration. 

The bronze equestrian statue of 
Washington was erected in the square 
close by where the citizens had received 
the Commander of the Army when he 
entered the city on Evacuation Day, 
November 25, 1783. The statue is 
the work of Henry K. Brown. The 
177 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

dedication occurred on July 4, 1856, 
and was an imposing ceremony. Rev. 
George W. Bethune delivered an ora- 
tion, and there was a military parade. 

Academy fhe Acadcmv of Music, at Four- 

of Music 10 ' J T • ni 

teenth Street and Irving rlace, was 
built in 1854 by a number of citi- 
zens who desired a permanent home for 
opera. On October 2nd of that year, 
Hackett took his company, headed by 
Grisi and Matio, there, the weather be- 
ing too cold to continue the season at 
Castle Garden. The building was 
burned in 1866 and rebuilt in 1868. 

In Third Avenue, between Sixteenth 
and Seventeenth Streets, is an old mile- 
stone which marked the third mile from 
Federal Hall on the Post Road. 

The Friends' Meeting House, at 
East Sixteenth Street and Rutherford 
Place, has existed since i860. In 1775 
178 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

it was in Pearl Street, near Franklin 
Square. In 1824 it was taken down 
and rebuilt in 1826 in Rose Street, 
near Pearl, 

St. George's (Episcopal) Church, at ^t. George's 
Rutherford Place and Sixteenth Street, 
was built in 1 845. The church was or- 
ganized in 1752, and before occupying 
the present site was in Beekman Street. 

Early in the century a stream of 
water ran from Stuy vesant's Pond, close 
by what is now Fourteenth Street and 
Second Avenue, to First Avenue and 
Nineteenth Street, having an outlet into 
the East River at about Sixteenth 
Street. In winter this furnished an ex- 
cellent skating-ground. 

Gramercy Park, at Twentieth and Gramercy 

Twenty-first Streets and Lexington 

Avenue, was originally part of the 

Gramercy Farm. In 1831 it was given 

179 



Park 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

by Samuel B. Ruggles to be used 
exclusively by the owners of lots front- 
ing on it. It was laid out and im- 
proved in 1840. In the pavement, in 
front of the park gate on the west side, 
is a stone bearing this inscription : 



GRAMERCY PARK 

FOUNDED BY 

SAMUEL B. RUGGLES 

183I 

COMMEMORATED BY THIS TABLET 

IMBEDDED IN 

THE GRAMERCY FARM BY 

JOHN RUGGLES STRONG. 

1875. 



Madison 
Square 



There was no evidence during the 
last part of the eighteenth century that 
the town would ever creep up to and 
beyond the point where Twenty-third 
Street crosses Broadway. This point 
was the junction of the Post Road to 
Boston and the Bloomingdale Road 
The latter was the fashionable out-of- 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

town driveway, and it followed the 
course that Broadway and the Boule- 
vard take now. The Post Road ex- 
tended to the northeast. At this point, 
in 1794, a Potter's Field was established. 
There were many complaints at its be- 
ing located there, where pauper funerals 
clashed with the vehicles of the well-to- 
do, and there was much rejoicing three 
years later, when the burying-ground 
was removed to the spot that is now 
Washington Square. 

In 1707 was built, where the bury- ^''^"^' "' 
ing-ground had been, an arsenal which Square 
extended from Twenty-fourth Street 
and over the site of the Worth Monu- 
ment. 

In the City Plan, completed in 1811, 
provision was made for a parade-ground 
to extend from Twenty-third to Thirty- 
fourth Streets, and Seventh to Third 
Avenue. The Commissioners decided 
that such a space was needed for mili- 
tary exercises, and where, in case of 



House of 
Refuge 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

necessity, there could be assembled a 
force to defend the city. In 1814, the 
limits of the parade-ground were re- 
duced to the space between Twenty- 
third and Thirty-first Streets, Sixth and 
Fourth Avenues, and given the name 
of Madison Square. 

The Arsenal in Madison Square was 
turned into a House of Refuge in 1824, 
and opened January i, 1825. This was 
the result of the work of an association 
of citizens who formed a societv to im- 
prove the condition of juvenile delin- 
quents. The House of Refuge was 
burned in 1839, and another institution 
built at the foot of Twenty-third Street 
the same year. A portion of the old 
outer wall of this last structure is still 
to be seen on the north side of Twenty- 
third Street, between First Avenue and 
Avenue A. 

In 1845, ^^ ^^^ suggestion of Mayor 

i8i 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

James Harper, Madison Square was re- 
duced to its present limits and laid out 
as a public park. Up to this time a 
stream of water had crossed the square, 
fed by springs in the district about Sixth 
Avenue, between Twenty-first and 
Twenty-seventh Streets. It spread out 
into a pond in Madison Square, and 
emptied into the East River at Seven- 
teenth Street. It was suggested that a 
street be created over its bed from Mad- 
ison Avenue to the river. This was not 
carried out, and the stream was simply 
buried. 

The road which branched out of the Post Road 
Bloomingdale Road at Twenty-third 
Street, sometimes called the Boston Post 
Road, sometimes the Post Road, some- 
times the Boston Turnpike, ran across 
the present Madison Square, strik- 
ing Fourth Avenue at Twenty-ninth 
Street; went through Kipsborough which 
hugged the river between Thirty-third 
183 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

and Thirty-seventh Streets, swept past 
Turtle Bay at Forty-seventh Street and 
the East River, crossed Second Avenue 
at Fifty-second Street, recrossed at 
Sixty-third Street, reached the Third 
Avenue hne at Sixty-fifth Street, and at 
Seventy-seventh Street crossed a small 
stream over the Kissing Bridge. Then 
proceeded irregularly on this line to One 
Hundred and Thirtieth Street, where it 
struck the bridge over the Harlem River 
at Third Avenue. The road was closed 
in 1839. 

The monument to Major-General 
William J. Worth, standing to the west 
of Madison Square, was dedicated No- 
vember 25, 1857. General Worth was 
the main support of General Scott in the 
campaign of Mexico. His body was 
first interred in Greenwood Cemetery. 
On November 23rd the remains were 
taken to City Hall, where they lay in 
state for two days, then were taken, un- 
1S4 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

der military escort, and deposited beside 
the monument. 



For twenty years, or more, prior to ^'^^^ 

• r 1 r^-ri A Avenue 

1853, the site or the present i^irth Ave- Hotel 
nue Hotel, at Twenty-third Street and 
Broadway, was occupied by a frame cot- 
tage with a peaked roof, and covered 
veranda reached by a flight of wooden 
stairs. This was the inn of Corporal 
Thompson, and a favorite stopping-place 
on the Bloomingdale Road. An en- 
closed lot, extending as far as the present 
Twenty-fourth Street, was used at certain 
times of the year for cattle exhibitions. 
In 1853 the cottage made way tor Fran- 
coni's Hippodrome,a brick structure, two 
stories high, enclosing an open space two 
hundred and twenty-five feet in diam- 
eter. The performances given here were 
considered of great merit and received 
with much favor. In 1856 the Hippo- 
drome was removed, and in 1858 the 
present Fifth Avenue Hotel was opened. 

i8s 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

The Madison Square Presbyterian 
Church, at Madison Avenue and 
Twenty-fourth Street, was commenced 
in 1853, the earlier church of the con- 
gregation having been in Broome Street. 
It was opened December, 1854, with 
Rev. Dr. William Adams as pastor. 



r « 



College of At the southeast corner of Twenty- 
New York third Street and Lexington Avenue, the 

College of the City of 
^ New York has stood since 

1848, the opening exer- 
cises having taken place 
in 1849. In 1847 the 
Legislature passed an 
Act authorizing the es- 
tablishment of a free acad- 
emy for the benefit of 
pupils who had been edu- 
cated in the public schools 
of this city. The name 
Free Academy was given 
to the institution, and un- 
186 




Collc^f of (ht 

City oI NewYouk 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

der that name it was incorporated. It had 
the power to confer degrees and diplomas. 
In 1866 the name was changed to its 
present title, and all the privileges and 
powers of a college were conferred upon 
it. In 1882 the college was thrown 
open to all young men, whether edu- 
cated in the public schools of this city 
or not. In 1898 ground was set aside 
in the northern part of the city, over- 
looking the Hudson River, for the 
erection of modern buildings suitable to 
meet the growth of the college. 

The House of Refuge in Madison o\d House 

o r 1 r • o ^^ Refuge 

Square was, after the hre m 1839, re- Wall 
built on the block bounded by Twenty- 
third and Twenty-fourth Streets, First 
Avenue and the East River. It was 
surrounded by a high wall, a section of 
which is still standing on the north side 
of Twenty-third Street, between First 
Avenue and Avenue A. The river at 
that time extended west to beyond the 
1S7 










-•i-' 



Bellevue 
Hospital 



Gate of 

Old HoV5B °( RSFVCE 



Avenue A line. The old gateway is 
there yet, and is used now as the en- 
trance to a coal-yard. Some of the 
barred windows of the wall can still be 
seen. In 1854 the inmates were re- 
moved to Randall's Island, and were 
placed in charge of the State. 

Bellevue Hospital has occupied its 
present site, at the foot of East Twenty- 
sixth Street, since about 18 10. The 
hospital really had its beginning in 1736, 
1S8 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

in the buildings of the PubHc Work- 
house and House of Correction in City 
Hall Park. There were six beds there, 
in charge of the medical officer, Dr. 
John Van Beuren. About the begin- 
ning of the nineteenth century, yellow 
fever patients were sent to a building 
known as Belle Vue, on the Belle Vue 
Farm, close by the present hospital 
buildings. In about 1810 it was de- 
cided to establish a new almshouse, 
penitentiary and hospital on the Belle 
Vue Farm. Work on this was com- 
pleted in I 8 16. The almshouse build- 
ing was three stories high, surmounted 
by a cupola, and having a north and 
south wing each one hundred feet long. 
This original structure stands to-day, 
and is part of the present hospital build- 
ing, other branches having been added 
to it from time to time. The water 
line, at that time, was within half a block 
of where First Avenue is now. 

In 1848 the Almshouse section of 
189 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

the institution was transferred to Black- 
well's Island. The ambulance service 
was started in 1869, and was the first 
service of its kind in the world. 

^^^^ Bull's Head Village was located in 

Village the district now included within Twenty- 
third and Twenty-seventh Streets, 
Fourth and Second Avenues. It be- 
came a centre of importance in 1826, 
when the old Bull's Head Tavern was 
moved from its early home on the 
Bowery, near Bayard Street, to the 
point which is now marked by Twenty- 
sixth Street and Third Avenue. It 
continued to be the headquarters of 
drovers and stockmen. As at that time 
there was no bank north of the City 
Hall Park, the Bull's Head Tavern 
served as inn, bank and general busi- 
ness emporium for the locality. For 
more than twenty years this district was 
the great cattle market of the city. As 
business increased, stores and business 
190 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

houses were erected, until, toward the 
year 1850, the cattle mart, which was 
the source of all business, was crowded 
out. It was moved up-town to the 
neighborhood of Forty-second Street ; 
later to Ninety-fourth Street, and in the 
early 8o's to the Jersey shore. The 
most celebrated person connected with 
the management of the Bull's Head 
Tavern was Daniel Drew. He after- 
wards operated in Wall Street, became 
a director of the New York and Erie 
Railroad upon its completion in 1851, 
and accumulated a fortune by specula- 
tion. 

At Twenty-eighth Street and Fourth Peter 

11 I Cooper's 

Avenue, on the southeast corner, the House 
house numbered 399-401, stands the 
old " Cooper Mansion," in which Petei 
Cooper lived. It was formerly on the 
site where the Bible House is now, at 
the corner of Eighth Street and Fourth 
Avenue. Peter Cooper himself super- 
191 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

intended the removal of the house in 
1820, and directed its establishment on 
the new site so that it should be recon- 
structed in a manner that should abso- 
lutely preserve its original form. Now 
it presents an insignificant appearance 
crowded about by modern structures, 
and it is occupied by a restaurant. 

This corner of Twenty-eighth Street 
and Fourth Avenue was directly on the 
line of the Boston Post Road. Just at 
that point the Middle Road ran from it, 
and extended in a direct line to Fifth 
Avenue and Forty-second Street. 



The Little Church Around the Cor- 
ner, a low, rambling struc- 
ture, seemingly all angles 
and corners, is on the 
north side of Twenty- 
ninth Street, mid- 
way of the block 
between Fifth 
\lj , and Madison 




Little Chi'ro) 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

Avenues. It is the Episcopal Church Little church 

n~>i '~n r • t • Around the 

or 1 he 1 ransnguration. Its picturesque Comer 
title was bestowed upon it in 1871, 
when Joseph Holland, an English actor, 
the father of E. M. and Joseph Hol- 
land, the players known to the present 
generation, died. Joseph Jefferson, 
when arranging for the funeral, went 
to a church which stood then at Madi- 
son Avenue and Twenty-eighth Street, 
to arrange for the services. The min- 
ister said that his congregation would 
object to an actor being buried from 
their church, adding : " But there is a 
little church around the corner where 
they have such funerals." Mr. Jeffer- 
son, astonished that such petty and unjust 
distinctions should be persisted in even 
in the face of death, exclaimed : " All 
honor to that Little Church Around 
the Corner ! " From that time until the 
present day, " The Little Church 
Around the Corner" has been the re- 
ligious refuge of theatrical folk. For 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

twenty-six years of that time, and until 
his death, the Rev. Dr. George H. 
Houghton, who conducted the services 
over the remains of actor Holland, was 
the firm friend of the people of the stage 
in times of trouble, of sickness and of 
death. 
Lich xhe lich gate at the entrance of the 

church is unique in this country, and is 
considered the most elaborate now in 
existence anywhere. It was erected in 
1895, at a cost of $4,000. 

The congregation worshipped first in 
a house at No. 48 East Twenty-fourth 
Street, in 1850. The present building 
was opened in 1856. Lester Wallack 
was buried from this church, as were 
Dion Boucicault, Edwin Booth, and a host 
of others. In the church is a memorial 
window to the memory of Edwin Booth, 
which was unveiled in 1898. It repre- 
sents a mediaeval histrionic student, his 
gaze fixed on a mask in his hand. Be- 
low the figure is the favorite quotation 
194 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

of Booth, from " Henry 11": " As one, 
in suffering all, that suffers nothing ; a 
man that fortune's buffets and rewards 
has taken with equal thanks." And the 
further inscription : " To the glory of 
God and in loving memory of Edwin 
Booth this window has been placed here 
by ' The Players.' " 

At Lexington Avenue and Thirtieth 
Street is the First Moravian Church, 
which has occupied the building since 
1869. This congregation was estab- 
lished in 1749. In 1751 their first 
church was built at No. 108 Fair (now 
Fulton) Street. In 1829a second house 
was erected on the same site. In 1849 
a new building was erected at the south- 
west corner of Houston and Mott 
Streets. This property was sold in 
1865, and the congregation then wor- 
shipped in the Medical College Hall, 
at the northwest corner of Twenty-third 
Street and Fourth Avenue, until the 

>95 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

purchase of the present building from 
the EpiscopaHans. It was erected by 
the Baptists in 1825. 

Brick At Fifth Avenue and Thirty-seventh 

Church Street is the Brick Presbyterian Church, 

which stood at the junction of Park 
Row and Nassau Street until 1858, 
when the present structure was erected. 
The locality was a very different one 
then, and the square quaintness of the 
church looks out of place amid its pres- 
ent modern surroundings. There is an 
air of solitude about it, as though it 
mourned faithfully for the green fields 
that shed peace and quietness about its 
walls when it was first built there. 

It is related of William C. H. Wad- 
dell, who, in 1845, built a residence on 
the same site, that when he went to look 
at the plot, with a view to purchase, his 
wife waited for him near by, under the 
shade of an apple tree. The ground 
there was high above the city grade. 
196 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

The eround between Fifth and Sixth Bryant 

o Park 

Avenues, Fortieth and Forty-second 
Streets, now occupied by Bryant Park 
and the old reservoir, was purchased by 
the city in 1822, and in 1823 a Potter's 
Field was established there, the one in 
Washington Square having been aban- 
doned in its favor. The reservoir, of 
Egyptian architecture, was finished in 
1842. Its cost was about $500,000. 
On July 5th water was introduced into 
it through the new Croton aqueduct, 
with appropriate ceremonies. The water 
is brought from the Croton lakes, forty- 
five miles above the city, through con- 
duits of solid masonry. The first con- 
duit, which was begun in 1 835, is carried 
across the Harlem River through the 
High Bridge, which was erected espe- 
cially to accommodate it. At the time 
the reservoir was put in use the locality 
was at the northern limits of the city. 
On Sundays and holidays people went 
on journeys to the reservoir, and from 
197 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

the promenades at the top of the struc- 
ture had a good view from river to river, 
and of the city to the south. The res- 
ervoir has not been in use for many 
years. 

The park was called Reservoir Square 
until 1884, when the name was changed 
to Bryant Park. 

AWorld's On July 4, 1853, a World's Fair, 
in imitation of the Crystal Palace, near 
London, was opened in Reservoir 
Square, when President Pierce made 
an address. The fair was intended to 
set forth the products of the world, but 
it attracted but little attention outside 
the city. It was opened as a permanent 
exposition on May 14, 1854, but 
proved a failure. One of the attractions 
was a tower 280 feet high, which stood 
just north of the present line of Forty- 
second Street and Fifth Avenue. In 
August, 1856, it was burned, and as a 
great pillar of flame it attracted more 
198 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

attention than ever before. The expo- 
sition buildings and their contents were 
in the hands of a receiver when they 
were destroyed by fire October 5, 
1858. 

Bryant Park has been selected as the 
site for the future home of the consoli- 
dated Tilden, Astor and Lenox Libra- 
ries. 

Murray Hill derives its name from Murray 

Hill 

the possessions of Robert Murray, 
whose house, I nclenberg,stood at the cor- 
ner of what is now Thirty-sixth Street 
and Park Avenue, on a farm which lay 
between the present Thirty-third and 
Thirty-seventh Streets, Bloomingdale 
Road (now Broadway) and the Boston 
Post Road (the present Third Avenue). 
The house was destroyed by fire in 
1834. On September 15, 1776, after 
the defeat on Long Island, the Ameri- 
cans were marching northward from the 
lower end ot the island, when the Brit- 

199 



NOOK-S AND CORNERS 

ish, marching toward the west, reached 
the Murrav House. Fhere the officers 
were well entertained by the Murrays, 
who, at the same time, managed to get 
word to the American Armv : the latter 
hurried on and joined Washint^ton at 
about Forty-third Street and Broadway, 
before the Knglish suspected that they 
were anvwhere within reach. 

The Murrav l^\irm extended down to 
Kip's Bay at Thirty-sixth Street. The 
Kip mansion was the oldest house on 
the Island of Manhattan when it was 
torn down in 1851. Where it stood, 
at the crossing of Thirty-fifth Street and 
Second Avenue, there is now not a trace. 
Jacob Kip built the house in 1655, of 
brick which he imported from Holland. 
The locality between the Murray Hill 
Farm and the river, that is, east of what is 
now Third Avenue between Thirtv-third 
and Thirty-seventh Streets, was called 
Kipsborough in Revolutionarv times. 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

The British forces landed, on the day Turtle 
of the stop at the Murray House, in 
Turtle Bay, that portion of the East 
River between Forty-sixth and Forty- 
seventh Streets. It was a safe harbor 
and a convenient one. Overlooking 
the bay, on a great bluff at the present 
Forty-first Street, was the summer 
home of Francis Bayard Winthrop. 
He owned the Turtle Bay Farm. The 
bluff is there yet, and subsequent cut- 
ting through of the streets has left it in 
appearance like a small mountain peak. 
Winthrop's house is gone, and in its 
place is Corcoran's Roost, far up on the 
height, whose grim wall of stone on the 
Fortieth Street side at First Avenue 
became in modern times the trysting- 
place for members of the " Rag Gang." 

Forty-seventh and Forty-ninth The Elgin 

•; Garden 

Streets, between Fifth and Sixth Ave- 
nues, enclose the tract formerly known 
as the Elgin Garden. This was a 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

botanical garden founded hy David 
Hosack, M, D., in i 801, when he was 
Professor of Botanv in Columbia Col- 
lege. In 1814 the land was purchased 
bv the State from Dr. Hosack and 
given to Columbia College, in consider- 
ation of lands which had been owned 
by the College but ceded to New 
Hampshire after the settlement of the 
boundary dispute. The ground is still 
owned bv Columbia Universitv. 

The block east of Madison Avenue, 
between bortv- ninth and Fiftieth 
Streets, was occupied in 1857 by Co- 
lumbia College, when the latter moved 
from its down-town site at Church and 
Murray Streets. The College occupied 
the building which had been erected in 
1 8 17 by the founders of the Institute 
for the Instruction of the Deaf and 
Dumb — the first asvlum tor mutes in 
the United States. The original in- 
tention had been to erect the college 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

buildings on a portion of the Elgin 
Garden property, but the expense in- 
volved was found to be too great. The 
asylum property, consisting of twenty 
lots and the buildings, was purchased 
in 1856. Subsequently the remainder 
of the block was also bought up. 

At Fiftieth Street and Fifth Avenue St. Patrick's 
is St. Patrick's Cathedral, the corner- 
stone of which was laid in 1858. The 
entire block on which it stands was, the 
preceding year, given to the Roman 
Catholics for a nominal sum — one dol- 
lar — by the city. 

The Roman Catholic Orphan Asy- 
lum in the adjoining block, on Fifth 
Avenue, between Fifty-first and Fifty- 
second Streets, was organized in 1825, 
but not incorporated until 1852, when 
the present buildings were erected. 

There is still standing, in Third 

203 



NOOKS A S D CORNERS 

Four Mile Avenue, just above Fittv-seventh Street, 

Stone ' 1 T1 

a milestone. It was once on the lost 

Road, four miles from Federal Hall in 
Wall Street. 



Close bv Fiftieth Street and Third 
Avenue, a I^otter's Field was estab- 
lished about iS^5. Near it was a 
spring of exceptionallv pure water. 
"" This water was carried away in carts 
and supplied to the city. Even 
after the introduction ot Croton 
water the water from this spring 
commamled a price ot two cents a 
pail trom manv who were strongly 
prejudiced at^ainst water that had 
been supplied 
throui^h pipes. 



Memories ot 
Nathan Hale, 
the Martyr Spy 
of the Revo- 
lution, hover 




3'* AvenCdf f/'^it 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

about the neighborhood of Fifty-first Beekman 
Street and First Avenue. The Beek- 
man House stood just west of the 
Avenue, between Fifty-first and Fifty- 
second Streets, on the site where Gram- 
mar School No. 135 is now. It was in a 
room of this house that Major Andre 
slept, and in the morning passed out to 
dishonor ; and it was in a greenhouse 
on these grounds that Nathan Hale 
passed the last of his nights upon earth. 
The house was built in 1763 by a de- 
scendant of the William Beekman who 
came from Holland in 1647 ^^^^ Peter 
Stuyvesant. During the Revolution it 
was the headquarters of General Charles 
Clinton and Sir William Howe. It 
stood until 1874, by which time it had 
degenerated into a crumbling tenement, 
and was demolished when it threatened 
to fall of natural decay. 

A very few steps from the East 
River, at Fifty-third Street, stands an 

205 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

An oi.l q\^\ hrick shot tower; :i lonclv aiul 
Tower Hcglected Sentinel now, hut still proudly 
looking skvward and hearing witness 
to its former usefulness. It was 
built in 1 82 1 hy a Mr. Youle. On 
October 9th it was nearing completion 
when it collapsed. It was at once re- 
huih, ami, as has been said, still stands. 
In 1S27 Mr. Voule advertised the sale 
of the lots near the tower, and desig- 
nated the location as bein^ " close bv 
the ( )ld Post Road near the four mile 
stone." 

Within half a dozen steps of the old 
tower, in the same lumber yanl, is a 
house said to he the oldest in the citv. 
It is of Dutch architecture, with sloping 
roof and a wide jnirch. I'he cuttinu; 
through and grading of Piftv-third 
Street have forced it higher above the 
grouiul than its builders intenileil it to 
be. Ihe outer walls, in {xirt, have 
been boarded over, ami some " modern 
improvements " have made it somewhat 
Z06 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

unsightly ; but inside, no vandal's art 
has been sufficient to hide its solid oak 
beams and its stone foundations that 
have withstood the shocks of time 
successfully. It was a farm-house, and 
its site was the Spring Valley Farm of 
the Revolution. It is thought to have 
been built by some member of the De ^^^ 
Voor family, who, after 1677, had a Farm 
grant of sixty acres of land along the 
river, and gave their name to a mill- 
stream long since forgotten, save for 
allusion in the pages of history. 

A block away in Fifty-fourth Street, 
between First Avenue and the river, 
is another Dutch house, though doubt- 
less of much later origin. It stands 
back from the street and has become 
part of a brewery, being literally sur- 
rounded by buildings. 

The first suggestion of a Central Central 
Park was made in the fall of 1 850, when 
Andrew J. Downing, writing to the 
207 



NOOKS AND CORNERS 

Horticulturist, advocated the establish- 
ment of a large park because ot the lack 
of recrpRtion-grounds in the citv. On 
April 5, 1851, Mavor Ambrose C. 
Kingsland, in a special message to the 
Common Council, suggested the neces- 
sity for the new park, pointing; out the 
limited extent and inadequacy of the ex- 
isting ones. The Common Council, 
approving of the idea, asked the I-eg- 
islature for authority to secure the 
necessary land. The ground suggested 
for the new park was the property 
known as "Jones' Woods," which 
lav between Sixty-sixth and Seventy- 
fifth Streets, Third Avenue and the 
East River. At an extra session of 
the Legislature in July, 1851, an Act 
known as the " Jones' Woods Park 
Bill " was passed, under which the city 
was given the right to acquire the land. 
The passage of this Act opened a dis- 
cussion as to whether there was no other 
location better adapted for a public park 
208 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

than Jones' Woods. In August a com- 
mittee was appointed by the Board of 
Aldermen to examine the proposed plot 
and others. This committee reported 
in favor of what they considered a more 
central site, namely, the ground lying 
between Fifty-ninth and One Hundred 
and Sixth Streets, Fifth and Eighth 
Avenues. On July 23, 1853, the 
Legislature passed an Act giving au- 
thority for the acquirement of the land, 
afterward occupied by Central Park, 
to Commissioners appointed by the 
Supreme Court. The previous Jones' 
Woods Act was repealed. These Com- 
missioners awarded for damages $5,169,- 
369.69, and for benefits 11,657,- 
590.00, which report was confirmed by 
the court in February, 1856. 

In May, 1856, the Common Council 
appointed a commission which took 
charge of the work of construction. 
On this commission were William 
C. Bryant, Washington Irving and 
209 



NOOKS A K D CORNERS 

George Bancroft. In 1857, however, 
a new Board was appointed by the Leg- 
islature, because of the inactivity of the 
first one. Under the new Board, in 
April of the year in which they were 
appointed, the designs of Calvert Vaux 
and Frederick L. Olmsted were ac- 
cepted and actual work was begun. 

The plans for the improvement of 
the park, which hav^e been consistentlv 
adhered to, were based upon the natural 
configuration of the land. As nearly as 
possible the hills, valleys and streams 
were preserved undisturbed. Trees, 
shrubs and vines were arranged with 
a view to an harmonious blending of 
size, shape and color — all that would 
attract the eye and make the park as 
beautiful in every detail as in its en- 
tirety. 

The year 1857 was one of much dis- 
tress to the poor, and work on the 
park being well under way, the Com- 
mon Council created employment for 



OF OLD NEW YORK 

many laborers by putting them to work 
grading the new park. 

The original limits were extended 
from One Hundred and Sixth to One 
Hundred and Tenth Street in 1859. 

As it exists to-day, Central Park con- 
tains eight hundred and sixty-two acres, 
of which one hundred and eighty-five 
and one-quarter are water. It is two and 
a half miles long and half a mile wide. 
Five hundred thousand trees have been 
set out since the acquisition of the land. 
There are nine miles of carriageway, 
five and a half miles of bridle-path, 
twenty-eight and one half miles of walk, 
thirty buildings, forty-eight bridges, 
tunnels and archways, and out-of-door 
seats for ten thousand persons. It is as- 
sessed at $87,000,000 and worth twice 
that amount. More than $14,000,-000 
have been spent on improvements. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



PAGE 

Abingdon, Earl of.. 109, 125 
Abingdon Road. .. 123, 124 

Abingdon Square 109 

Academy of Music. . . . 178 
All Saints' Church .... 136 
Allen Street Memorial 

Church 142 

American Museum. ... 37 

Andre, Major 205 

Aquarium, Public 5 

Arsenal in Madison 

Square 182 

Art Street 167 

Aster House 78 

Astor, John Jacob 163, 172 

Astor Library 1 70, 1 7 1 

Astor Place 172 

Astor Place Opera 

House. . . . 168, 169, 170 
Astor, William B 172 



P.AGE 

Bank Cotfee House. .. . 146 

Bank Street 113 

Banker Street 134 

Bank for Savings,The. 38,151 

Barnum, P. T 5, 30 

Barnum's Museum. ... 30 

Barrow Street 108 

Battery 4 

Battery Park 4 

Battery Place 9 

Bayard Family Vault. . . 144 

Beaver Lane 56 

Beaver's Path 8 

Beaver Street 8, 9, 10 

Bedford Street M. E. 

Church 106 

Beekman House 205 

Belle Vue Farm 189 

Bellevue Hospital. .188, 

189, 190 



ais 



INDEX 



PAGE 

Bible House i66, 191 

Bleecker Street Bank.. 151 

Block, Adrian 56, 57 

Bloomingdale Road 124, 

128, 175, 180, 185,199 

Bond Street 149 

Bone Alley 139, 140 

Booth, Edwin 194 

Boston Post Road.. 1 8 3, 

192, 199 

Boston Turnpike 183 

Boulevard 181 

Bouwerie Lane 46 

Bouwerie Village. .156, 

157, 158. 159. 160, 161 

Bowery, The 47 

Bowery Lane 166, 175 

Bowery Road 47, 

128, 163, 164 

Bowery Theatre 49 

Bowery Village Church 162 

Bowling Green 3, 55 

Bowling Green Garden. 84 

Bradford, William 14 

Grave of 63 

Brannan's Garden loi 

Breese, Sydney, grave of 62 
Brevoort, Hendrick. . . 174 
Brick Presbyterian 

Church 31, 196 

Bridewell 35 

Bridge Street 9 

Broad Street 8, 9, 10 



PAGE 

Broadway 12, 

55, 175, 180, 181 

Broadway Theatre 97 

Brougham's Lyceum. . . 97 

Brouwer Street 15 

Bryant Park 114, 

197, 198, 199 

Bull's Head Tavern. 49, 190 
Bull's Head Village 

190, 191 

Bunker Hill 144 

Burdell Murder,The. 149, i 50 
Burr, Aaron, home of. 18, 104 

Office of. 40 

Last Friend of . . . . 67 

Burton's Theatre 39 

Cafe des Mille Col- 

onnes 39, 86 

Canal Street. 41, 42, 94, 95 

Canda, Madam 1 71 

Castle Garden 5, 178 

Cedar Street 21 

Cemetery, New York 

City Marble. . ..154, 155 
Cemetery, New York 
Marble . . 151, 152, 

•53. »54 
Central Park. . . . 207, 

208, 209, 210, 21 1 

Chambers Street 34 

Chambers Street Bank.. 37 

Chanfrau, Frank 170 



216 



I N D 

PAGE 

Chapel Place 83 

Chatham,Earl of. 18,47, 90 
Chatham Square. . .45, 46 

Chatham Street 47 

Chelsea Cottages 129 

Chelsea Village.. .126, 

127, 128, 129 

Cherry Hill 5'. 5^ 

Cherry Street 5^ 

Church, All Saints'. ..136 
" Allen Street Mem- 
orial 14^ 

" Bedford Street Mem- 
orial 106 

" Bowery Village .. . 162 
*< Brick Presbyterian 

31, 196 
«« Dr. Schroeder's. . . 167 

" Duane M. E 102 

" First French Hu- 
guenot 9 

♦' First Moravian... 195 
" First Presbyterian. 154 
" First Reformed Pres- 
byterian 40, 118 

«« Friends' Meeting 

House 178 

«' Grace 5^. '75 

«♦ John Street. . .26, 

161, 162 
«« Little, Around the 
Corner. . ..192, 

193, 194, 195 



E X 

PAGE 

Church, Madison Square 

Presbyterian.. . . 186 
" Mariners'. ... 133, 134 
" Dutch Middle Re- 
formed. .21, 22, 171 
'* New Jerusalem ... 89 
" Oliver Street Baptist 133 

«' St. Ann's 167 

" St. George's. . .29, 179 

" St. John's 91 

" St. Mark's. . . .86, 

156, 157, 158, 159 

" St. Mary's 137 

" St. Patrick's. 144, 145 
'< St. Patrick's Ca- 
thedral 203 

«' St. Paul's 75, 

76, 77. 78 

«< St. Peter's 81 

«< Sea and Land, of.. 135 
<< Second Street 

Methodist 156 

" Spring Street Pres- 
byterian 102 

'• Transfiguration, of 

the (Episcopal) 

192, 193, 194, 195 

«< Transfiguration, of 

the (Catholic) 

44. 45 
" Trinity. . .20, 56, 

58, 60, 61 
Church Farm 59 



217 



I N D 

PAGE 

Churchyard, St. Paul's. 155 

" Trinity. .58, 59, 

60, 61, 62, 63, 

64, 65, 66, 67, 

68,69,70,71, 72 

Churcher, Richard, 

Grave of 61 

City Hall 35 

City HaU (first) Site of, 

7, 8, li 

City Hall in Wall Street, 17 
City Hall Park. 34, 35, 

36, 37, 38, 39 

City Hospital 88, 89 

City Hotel 73, 74 

City Library 120 

City Prison in City Hall 

Park 35 

Clarke, Capt. Thomas. 127 

Cliff Street 24 

Clinton, Gen. Charles.. 205 

Clinton Hall. .28, 168, 169 

Coenties Lane 13 

Coenties Slip 12, 13 

Collect, The 41 

College of the City of 

New York 186, 187 

College Place 83 

CoUis, Christopher, 

Tomb of 77 

Colonnade Row 172 

Columbia College ..81, 

82, 83, 202 

21 



E X 

PAGE 

Commons, The 34 

Company's Farm 59 

Cooke, George Fred- 
erick, Grave of. .77, 78 
Cooper, James Fenimore, 

House of 147 

Cooper Mansion 191 

Cooper, Peter. 164, 165, 166 

House of. ... 191, 192 

Statue of 165 

Cooper Union. 161, 164, 165 

Corcoran' s Roost ... . 201 

Cornbury, Lady 66 

Corlears Hook Park.. . 136 

Country Market 75 

Coutant, John, House 

of 161 

Cox, Samuel S., Statue 

of 168 

Cresap, Michael, Grave 

of 70 

Croton Water Celebra- 
tion 177, 197 

Cryptograph in Trinity 
Churchyard.. .64, 65, 66 

Crystal Palace 198 

Custom House 16, 18 

Cuyler's Alley 15 

Debtors' Prison .... 34, 3 5 

Delacroix 163 

De Lancey, Etienne. 10, 

72, 73. 74 







I N 






PAGE 


De Lancey, James 


..72, 




73. 


143. 


144 


De Lancey, Susannah . . 


100 


Delmonico's 


. 16, 


2S 


De Voor House . . 




207 


Dickens, Charles . 




31 


Drew, Daniel. . . . 




191 


Duane M. E. Church.. 


102 


Duke's Farm .... 




59 


Dutch West India ( 


Com- 




Pany 




2 



Backer, George, Grave 

of. 78 

East River Bridge (sec- 
ond) 137 

Eleventh Street 174 

Elgin Garden. 201, 202, 203 

Eliot Estate 172 

Emmet, Thomas Addis 

77, 155 

Essex Market 143 

Exterior Market 75 

Fayette Street 133 

Federal Hall 17, 18 

Fields, The 34 

Fifth Avenue Hotel. .. . 185 

Fire of 1835 14 

First French Huguenot 

Church 9 

First G-raveyard 56 

First House Built 56 



D E X 

PAGE 

First Moravian Church.. 195 
First Presbyterian 

Church 154 

First Prison Labor no 

First Reformed Presby- 
terian Church .... 40, 1 1 8 
First Savings Bank. ... 37 
First Sunday School. ... 161 
First Tenement House. . 136 
Fish, Hamilton, Park. . 139 

Fish Market 75 

Fitzroy Road 126, 128 

Five Points 42, 43 

Five Points House of 

Industry 44 

"Flat and Barrack Hill" 16 

Fly Market 23 

Forrest, Edwin. ... 168, 169 
Forrest-Macready Riots. 

168, 169, 170 

Fort Amsterdam. . . . i, 2 

Fort Clinton 4 

Fort George 2 

Fort James 2 

Fort Manhattan 2 

Fountain in Union 

Square 177 

Franconi's Hippodrome. 185 

Franklin House 50 

Franklin Square 51 

Fraunces' Tavern... 10, 11 

Free Academy. ... 186, 187 

Fresh Water Pond. ... 41 



219 



Friends' Meeting House 
Fulton Street 

Garden, Bowling Green. 
" Brannan's . . . . 

" Castle 5, 

*' Elgin. 201,202, 
" Niblo's. ..146, 

" Ranelagh 

" Vauxhall (first) 

84, 

" Vauxhall (last) 

163, 164, 

" Winter 

Garden Street 

Gardner, Noah. ... 1 10, 

General Theological 
Seminary .. 126, 127, 

George III, Statue of'.. 

3) 

Gold Street 

Golden Hill 

Golden Hill, Battle of. . 
Golden Hill Inn. . ..24, 
Government House. . I, 
Governor's Room, City 

Hall 

Grace Church 58, 

Gramercy Park 

Graveyard, Jewish . . 50, 

116, 11^, 122, 

♦' Paupers'. 34, 1 14, 

115, 181, 197, 



INDEX 

PACE PAGE 

178 Graveyard, St. John's.. . 105 

20 " St. Paul's 155 

" Trinity. .59, 60, 
84 61, 62, 63, 64, 

loi 65, 66, 67, 68 

178 " New York City 

203 Marble. . .154, 155 

147 " New York Mar- 
94 ble..i5i, 152, 

153. '54 

163 Great Bouwerie 157 

Great Kiln Road. .118, 

170 121, 122, 125 

148 Great Queen Street. ... 12 
16 Greenwich Avenue. ... 116 

III " Lane. .116, 166 

" Road... 80, 81 

129 " Street . .80, 81 
" Village .98, 

19 99, 100, lOI 

23 Grove Street 108 

^3 

24 Hale, Nathan. 38, 135, 204 

25 Hall of Records 34 

2 Hamilton, Alexander, 

Grave of 66 

36 Hamilton, Alexander, 

175 Home of 18 

179 Hamilton, Philip 67 

Haunted House.. .165, 166 

123 Holland, Joseph 193 

Holt's Hotel 21 

204 Hone, Philip 159 

zzo 



I N 

PAGE 

Horse and Cart Street. . 26 

Hosack Botanical Gar- 
den 82 

Hosack, David 202 

Hotel, Astor 78 

" City 73, 74 

*' Fifth Avenue . . 185 

" Holt's 21 

'* Metropolitan... 147 
" Riley's Fifth 

Ward 89, 90 

" St. Nicholas. ... 145 

" Tremont 149 

♦' United States. . . 20 

Houghton, Rev. Dr. 

George H 1 94 

House of Aaron Burr. . 

18, 104 

House, First, of White 

Men 56 

House of James Feni- 

more Cooper 147 

House of Peter Cooper. 

191, 192 

House of John Coutant. 161 

House of the De Lan- 

ceys 10, 72, 73, 74 

House o f Alexander 

Hamilton 18 

House of Thomas Paine 

107, 108 

House of President 

Monroe 145 



D E X 

PAGE 

H ouse of Refuge 182 

House o f Charlotte 

Temple 48, 167 

House of Francis Bay- 
ard Winthrop 201 

Houston Street 150 

Howe, Sir William.. . . 205 
Huguenot Memorials in 
Trinity Churchyard . . 

69, 71 

Inclenberg 199 

Institution for the In- 
struction of the Deaf 

and Dumb 202 

Island of Manhattan ... 138 

"Jack-knife," The... 23 

Jail in City Hall Park.. 34 

James Street 133 

Jans' Farm 59, 60 

Jeanette Park 13 

Jefferson, Joseph 193 

Jewish Graveyard in 

New Bowery 50 

Jewish Graveyard in 

Eleventh Street .116, 1 1 7 
Jewish Graveyard in 

Twenty-first Street. . 

117, 122, 123 

John Street i6 

John Street Church . 26, 

161, 162 



INDEX 

PACE 



John Street Theatre. ... 26 

Jones' Woods 208 

Jumel, Mme 40 

Keene, Laura, Theatre 

of 147 

King's College 82 

King's Farm 59 

Kip's Bay 200 

Kip, Jacob 200 

Kipsbcrough 183, 200 

Kissing Bridge 47, 184 

Lawrence, Capt., Grave 

of 68 

Lafarge House 148 

Lafayette, General .... 172 
Lafayette Place. . . . 1 67, 

170, 171, 172 
La Grange Terrace. ... 172 
Leeson, James, Grave of 64 
Leisler, Jacob, Where 

Hanged 31, 32 

Lich Gate of Little 
Church Around the 

Corner 194 

Light Guards 7 

Lind, Jenny 5 

Lispenard's Meadows. . 

^o. 93. 94. 95 
Little Church Around 

the Corner 192, 

>93. >94. >95 



PAGE 

Logan, the Friend of the 

White Man 70 

London Terrace 129 

Love Lane. .121, 124, 

125, 126, 128 



Macneven, William 

James 77 

Macomb's Mansion... 
Mac ready -Forrest Riots 
168, 169 
Macready, William 

Charles 168 

Madison Square. . . 182 
Madison Square Presby 

terian Church 

Madison Street 

Maiden Lane 13, 

Mandelbaum, "Moth- 
er" ..141, 

Manetta Brook 99 

Manetta Creek ...113, 114 
Manhattan Island. I 3-, 

138, 142 
Manhattan Market ... . 139 
Marble Houses on 

Broadway 148, 149 

Mariners' Church. 133, 134 

Mariners' Temple 133 

Market, Country 75 

"■ Esse.x 143 

" E.xterior 75 

" Fish 7 s 



>55 

57 



169 
183 

186 
134 



142 



I N 

PAGE 

Market, Fly 23 

'* Manhattan. . . 139 

" Meal 20 

'* Uptown 74 

" Washington . . 74 

Marketfield Street 8 

Martyrs' Monument. .. 

63, 64 

Masonic Hall 87, 88 

Meal Market 20 

Medical College Hall. . 195 
Mercantile Library.. 28, 

29, 170 

Merchants' Exchange.. i6 

Metropolitan Hall 148 

Metropolitan Hotel. ... 147 
Middle Dutch Reformed 

Church 21, 22, 171 

Middle Road 192 

Mile Stone. . 143, 178, 204 
Military Prison Win- 
dow 41 

Milligan's Lane. . . 1 17, 118 

Minetta Street.99, 1 13, 114 
Monroe, President 

James 145, 155 

Montgomery, General. 76 

Monument Lane. . 1 1 5, 166 
Moore, Bishop Benjamin 

127, 128 

Moore, Clement C. 128, 129 

Morris Street 56 

Morse, Samuel F. B. .. 5 



D E X 

PAGE 

Morton, General Jacob. 7, 37 

Morton, John 6 

Mount Pitt 137 

Mount Pitt Circus .... 137 

Mulberry Bend 43 

Murder of Dr. Burdell. 

149, 150 
Murder of Mary Rogers 

145, 146 

Murderers' Row 97 

Murray Family. 199,200,201 

Murray Farm 200 

Murray Hill i 99, 200 

Nassau Street. 17, 18, 21, 22 

Nean, Elias, Grave of . . 71 
Nean, Susannah, Grave 

of 71 

Negro Insurrection .... 42 

New Jerusalem Church . 89 
New York City Marble 

Cemetery 1 54, 155 

New York Hospital. 88, 89 

New York Institute. . . 37 
New York Marble Cem- 

etery.isi, 152, 153, 154 
New York Society Li- 
brary 119, 120 

New York Theatre. ... 170 
New York Theatre and 
Metropolitan Opera 

House 148 

Niblo's Garden. . . . 146, 147 

223 



PAGE 

Niblo's Theatre 146 

Nicholas William Street 161 

North Street 150, I 51 

Obelisk Lane 115 

"Old Brewery" 44 

Oldest Grave in Trinity 

Churchyard 61 

Old Guard 7 

Oliver Street 133 

Oliver Street Baptist 

Church 133 

Orphan Asylum, Ro- 
man Catholic 203 

Olympic Theatre. . .96, 147 



Paine, Thomas, Home 

of. 107, 108 

Paisley Place 122 

Palmo Opera House. 39, 87 

Parade-Ground 181 

Park, Battery 4 

'« Bryant 1 14, 

197, 198, 199 

♦» Central. . . .207, 

208, 209, 210, 211 

«' City Hall . . . 34, 

35. 36, 37, 38, 39 

" Corlears Hook. . 136 

" Gramercy 179 

" Hamilton Fish. . I 39 

" Jeanettc 13 

'« St. John's. . .91, 92 



INDEX 

PAGE 

Park Row 47 

Park Theatre (first). ... 30 

Patti, Adelina 148 

Payne, John Howard. . 36 
Pauper Graveyard... 34, 

114, 115, 181, 197, 204 

Pearl Street 9, 11, 

12, 13. '4 

Peck Slip 12 

Petticoat Lane 8, 9 

Pie Woman's Lane ... 22 
Pitt, William, Statue of, 

18, 47, 90 

Piatt Street 23 

Poelnitz, •' Baron ".. . 173 
Poor House in City Hall 

Park 34 

Post Office 21, 33 

Post Road.. . .47, 124, 

125, 180, i8i, 182, 204 
Potter's Field, Bryant 

Park 1 14, 197 

Potter's Field, City Hall 

Park 34 

Potter's Field, Madison 

Square 181 

Potter's Field, Third 

Avenue 204 

Potter's Field, Wash- 
ington Square. .. 1 14, 115 
Printing-Press, First in 

Colony 13 

Prison Manufactures. .. no 



224 



INDEX 

PAGE PAGE 

Prison Riots ill Road, Southampton. . . 

Prison, State 109, 117, 120, 125 

no, III, 112 " Union 117, 

118, 119, 120 

Queen's Farm 59, 81 " Warren 126 

Rogers, Mary, Murder 

Rachel, the Actress. . . 148 of. 145, 146 

"Rag Gang" 201 Rotunda in City Hall 

Randall, Robert Richard Park 37 

173, 174 Ruggles, Samuel B. .. . 180 

Ranelagh Garden 94 Rutgers, Anthony. .92, 

Red Fort <)Z 93, 94 

Reservoir Square 198 Rutgers, Col. Henry . . 135 

Revolutionary House . . 79 Rutgers Farm 135 

Revolutionary War, 

First Blood of 24 Sailors' Snug Harbor. . 

Richmond Hill. .. 103, 173, 174 

104, 105 St. Ann's Church .... 167 

Riley's Fifth Ward Ho- St. Gaudens, Augustus. 165 

tel 89, 90 St. George's Church. 29, 179 

Road, Abingdon 123 St. George Square. ... 51 

" Boston Post. ... St. James Street 133 

183, 192, 199 St. John's Burying- 

" Bowery 47, Ground 105 

128,163, 164 St. John's Church ... . 91 

'« Fitzroy. . . .126, 128 St. John's Park 91, 92 

" Great Kiln. 1 18, St. Mark'sChurch. .86, 

121, 122 156, 158, 159 

" Greenwich. .80, 81 St. Mary's Church. .. . 137 

'« Middle 191 St. Nicholas Hotel. .. . 145 

" Post. 47, 124, 125, St. Patrick's Cathedral. 203 

180, 181, 182, 204 Sf Patrick's Church. . 

" Skinner 117 I44> '45 

225 





I N D 


E X 




PACE 


PAr.F. 


St. Paul's Chapel. .75, 




State Street :;, 


6 


76, 77, 


78 


Stewart, Alexander T.. 




St. Paul's Churchyard. 


^'^S 


85, 86, 


'59 


St. Peter's Church. . . . 


81 


Stewart Mansion 


86 


Savings Bank, the First. 


>"' 


Stone Street 


>5 


Schroeder, Rev. Dr.... 


167 


Stuyvesant's Creek. . . . 


142 


Scudder's Museum. . . . 


37 


Stuyvesant's Pear Tree. 


160 


Second East River 




Stuyvesant, Peter. ..16, 




Bridge 


'37 


156, 157, 158, 159, 


160 


Second Street Methodist 




Stuyvesant's Pond 


179 


Church 


156 


Stuyvesant Street 


167 


Sewing Machine Ex- 




Sub-Treasury Building . . 


18 


hibited 


87 


" Suicide Slip " 


95 


Shakespeare Tavern. 27, 


28 


Sunday School, the First 


161 


Shearith Israel Grave- 








yard 50, 116, 


122 


Tammany Hall. . . .32, 


33 


Sheep Pasture 


8 


Tattersairs 95, 


96 


Shot Tower 


206 
'34 


Tea Water Pump 

Temple, Charlotte, 


48 


Shipyards 


Skinner Road 


"7 


Tomb of. 62, 


63 


Smit's V'lei 


'Z'Z 


Temple, Charlotte, 




Southampton, Baron. . . 




Home of 48, 


167 


109, 


122 


Tenement House, the 




Southampton Road .... 




First 


136 


I 17, 120, 


J25 


Ten Eyck, Conraet. . . . 


1 3 


Sperry, John 


163 


Tompkins, Daniel D. . 


159 


Spring Street Presby- 




Thames Street 


71 


terian Church 


102 


Theatre Alley 


3' 


Spring Valley Farm. . . . 


207 


Theatre, Academy of 




Stadhuis Site 


7 


Music 


178 


Stidt Huys 12, 


'5 


" Astor Place 




State Prison 109, 




Opera House 




I I 0, III, 


112 


168, 169, 


170 




Z2 


.6 





Theatre, Bowery 

" Broadway. . . . 
" Brougham's. . 

" Burton's 

" Laura Keene's 
'* Jo^in Street . . 
" Metropolitan 

Hall 

" New York. .. 

" New York 

Theatre and 

Metropolitan 

Opera House 

" Niblo's 

" Olympic. . .96, 
" Palmo's . . 39, 

" Park 

«' Tripler Hall.. 
«' Wallack's.97, 
<' Winter Garden 
Thompson's Inn, Cor- 
poral 

Thorne, Charles R. . .. 
Tilden, Astorand Lenox 

Libraries 

Tin Pot Alley 57, 

Tombs 

Tompkins Blues 

Tontine Coffee House.. 

Tontine Society 

Tremont House 

Trinity Church. . . . 20, 
56, 58, 60, 



INDEX 

PAGE PAGE 

49 Trinity Churchyard .... 
97 58, 59» 60, 61, 62, 

97 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 

39 68, 69, 70, 71, 72 

147 Tripler Hall 148 

26 Turtle Bay 184, 201 

Turtle Bay Farm 201 

148 Twenty-first Street. ... 124 
170 

Union Place 177 

Union Road 117, 

118, 119, 120 
148 Union Square .... 175, 177 

146 United New Netherland 

147 Company 2 

87 United States Hotel. . . 20 
30 Uptown Market 74 

148 

176 Van Hoboken, Her- 

148 manus 157 

Vauxhall Garden (first) 

185 84, 163 
170 Vauxhall Garden (last) 

163, 164, 170 

199 Virgin's Path 22 

58 

41 Wall, City's 16 

7 Wall Street. . . .9, 13, 

19 16, 17, 19, 20 

19 Wall Street, Trees in. . 20 

149 Wallack, James W . . . 176 
Wallack's Lyceum.. 97, 176 

61 Warren, Ann 109 

227 



INDEX 

PACE 



Warren, Charlotte. ... 109 

Warren Road 126 

Warren, Sir Peter 

100, 108, 109, i;4. 
Warren, Susannah. . . . 109 
Washington Inaugurated 17 
Washington Inaugura- 
tion Ball 73 

Washington's Broadway 

Home 57 

Washington Hall ..... 85 
Washington's Headquar- 
ters II 

Washington's Headquar- 
ters at Richmond Hill 104 
Washington's Home in 

Franklin House. ... 50 
Washington's Pew in 

St. I'aul's Chapel. . . 76 
Washington Market. . . 74 
Washington Statue in 

Union Square 177 

Washington Tablet. 37, 90 



Washington Square. . .. 

113, 115, 1-2, 181, 19- 

Water Tank 176 

Weavers' Row 122 

Well in Broadway 149 

Well in Rivington Street 141 

Wellof William Cox. . 13 

West Broadway 83 

West's Circus 95 

West India Co 2 

Whitehall Street 8 

Wiehawken Street. ... 112 

William Street 16 

Window of Military 

Prison 40 

Winter Garden 148 

Winthrop, Francis Bay- 
ard 201 

Wolfe, Gen., Statue of 115 

World's Fair Grounds.. 198 
Worth Monument. . . . 

184, 18,- 

Wreck Brook 41 



c 



m 



89 



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//^^^-^ ^°^:^^'> /^'^'^ 
















HECKMAN 

BINDERY INC. 

€. NOV 89 
W N. MANCHESTER, 
^ INDIANA 46962 
V— 






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